


Excuse

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Second War with Voldemort, The Quidditch Pitch: Television
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-08
Updated: 2008-02-07
Packaged: 2018-10-26 11:46:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10786128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: As it turns out, the wizard can drag himself out of his past.  It becomes a problem when the past tries so doggedly to pull the wizard back in...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
> **Author's notes:**
> 
> Some time ago, I embarked on a mission to try and bring credibility to the idea that two very different fandoms can be successfully merged without destroying either. Nearly a year later, I'm still enjoying figuring out what goes successfully with what. It's rather like trying a recipe. Which is saying something because I rather dislike cooking...
> 
> Many, many thanks to my wonderful aforementioned beta reader, Silja B. 

**Excuse**  
_By Angelfirenze_  
  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Shore, Singer, Jacobs, and Rowling are the architects of this amalgam. Blame them, along with one episode of The Office (US), The Harry Potter Trading Card Game, and _The Boondock Saints_.  
  
**Summary:** Incorrigible. That's what Cuddy and Wilson call him whenever he's pulled some stunt or played a prank or made some comment. It's one of his favorite words, but they don't know why. Considering the circumstances, neither does he.  
  
**Rating: MA** for darkness, angst, and...well, the fact that it was Smut Tuesday over at [house_cuddy](http://house-cuddy.livejournal.com) also says a lot.  
  
**Pairings, etc.:** *sighs* I don't think I have room to list all the possibilities I plan to explore. The CONCRETE ones, however, are House/Cuddy/Wilson, House/Cuddy, House/Wilson, and Cuddy/Wilson. Oh, and James Potter/Lily Evans, for canon-sake, obviously.  
  
**Spoilers:** Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, to say the least. Probably the other five, as well. House, M.D., seasons one and two. I flatly refuse to mention the Tritter debacle or its completely irrelevant detraction from the main story. The [_Demons_](http://kidsnurse.livejournal.com/36643.html) series by my dear friend, [kidsnurse](http://kidsnurse.livejournal.com/), who has kindly consented to let me use her wonderful plot for my own machinations and such. I hope she doesn't regret it.

Special thanks to [silja_b](http://silja_b.livejournal.com/), who put up with at least six revisions of this chapter.

  
***  
  
Sometimes he dreams about it. Though that really isn't much to go on because he's dreamed about solving that damned worded Rubik's Cube, too, and it's still taken him two weeks, off and on, to get the sections positioned right. But sometimes, when he's still awake at four am, listening to their breathing on either side of him, he thinks about it. _Reducto_ , something in his head says, or _Avifors_ , and the barriers break, his memories coming forth like birds or a fountain of wine from the end of a wand.  
  
Or like that sickly green haze so benign in and of itself, signifying so much more (destruction, malevolence, blood, and death...so _much_ of it...) in their whole.  
  
He shivers, clenching his eyes shut and trying not to remember.  
  
_Obliviate_ , he thinks, lifting a hand to his chest. Maybe if he thinks it hard enough, it'll work. He's kidding himself and he knows it.  
  
_"You never worry," her voice is telling him as she hugs him goodbye. It's no use trying to persuade her otherwise. Sure, he worries, but it doesn't always show. He thinks that, deep down, she knows.  
  
"If I come down with terrible bleeding sores or wake up covered in blisters--"  
  
"I'll give you essence of murtlap...or tell you to take an oatmeal bath. One of the two--herpes is a bitch and a half to deal with and I'd hate to have to lecture you on the proper spell for a condom--"  
  
And she laughs in that shrieking, wide-eyed way she always did when he's managed to shock her yet again. You'd think she was used to it by now, but...  
  
"Gregory House, you are absolutely incorrigible."_  
  
Incorrigible. That's what Cuddy and Wilson call him whenever he's pulled some stunt or played a prank or made some comment. It's one of his favorite words, but they don't know why. Considering the circumstances, neither does he.  
  
His ties sit in a box in the back of his closet. They're the only parts of his uniform that he has left. Blue, black, and bronze. Dotted with blood. He'd worn the shirt and tie because Lily had asked him to dress nicely for dinner with James (they were finally calling a truce for Lily's and Harry's sakes and Lily thought that dinner would make it official) and it was the only decent unrumpled, non-t-shirt thing he'd had at the time. He'd been late because he'd been too nervous to concentrate properly on Apparating and had Splinched himself in front of a Muggle, costing him six hours of paperwork and two hundred Galleons, leaving him in quite the sore state at the time but all had been forgotten as soon as his eyes had landed on their partially destroyed house. Lily had Apparated directly to his apartment herself to give him the address and had watched him personally burn it. He'd been so relieved to finally get to see her that he hadn't even made any jokes about her taciturn mood. They had been the joking ones, always teasing Regulus for his broody nature and grinning whenever he rose to their bait, which was often. House, in general, has always enjoyed watching people's reactions. Jimmy, in particular, is excellent for responses that are completely above and beyond the situation itself. Cuddy's good for the little flush she gets whenever he make some comment that makes him want to throw her back against one of their desks and defile it properly. It's not much, but it's a reason to smile (to laugh until he and Lisa are breathless and hold onto each other to keep from falling over and he feels drunk with glee and lightheaded afterward and can forget for a while) so he takes it.  
  
The blood spatter on the tie is his own because _Avada Kedavra_ doesn't leave a mark. He'd smashed his fist into the door trying to get through it and the rest of his arm had followed suit. He hadn't even realized he'd either broken or fractured his ( _hamate, hook of hamate, metacarpal, trapezium, proximal phalanx_ ) hand, his ( _radius, ulna_ ) arm, his ( _scapulae, clavicle_ ) shoulder, until hours later when the pain had woken him up and it was time for his potion replenishing. It was the last time he'd been in Saint Mungo's. Remus had been the one who found him, he'd later discovered. _Sirius, of course, was..._  
  
NO.  
  
He wants to slam his head back against the bars of Cuddy's bedstead, but that would wake them.  
  
He breathes deeply and counts to one hundred, two hundred...does their multiples by three. He stops after 600, when it's clear he won't be sleeping tonight. He pulls numb then tingly arms out from under one of the pillows and presses the heels of callused hands into his eyes.  
  
He really misses his piano right now, but it's at his apartment alone and in the dark--like him, on most days and some nights.  
  
He almost wishes for a spasm, just for the distraction. The excuse to pop a pill. Then he wants to kill himself because he can see Lily's bright green eyes staring at him with such hurt, such scorn, for letting himself get so wrapped up in trying to be numb. Regulus would sigh and frown, but would let it go and he'd be grateful, but Lily would grieve for him as he does for her.  
  
Then he imagines her tears falling on his face and hears her whispering, asking what she could possibly do to help him want to feel again because he's her brother and she hates what his pain does to him.  
  
After all, Jimmy and Lisa have tried (have done more than they should have, really, at risk to their licenses and sanity and all for just a few ephemeral moments' relief) and his mother has tried and even Stacy. But Stacy didn't know what it was like to hold your best friend's body in your arms, staring at the equally lifeless form of her husband, wondering why they were dead, what the fuck purpose it served. If there even was one. He'd been insanely irritated by James more than once, but not enough to ever want this.  
  
Never, in a million eons.  
  
He's always hated to remember, and never more than now.  
  
The lime green numbers glowing from Cuddy's bedside table color Jimmy's skin and make him look sickly. Wrong body, he believes, but he's in the middle of their tangle, languishing in bare skin and the gentle slide of Cuddy's silken sheets (warmth that he can't seem to find anywhere else except for the bottoms of plastic vials and glass bottles) because he likes it.   
  
_...I love it, but I hate the taste...Breaking me down..._  
  
He feels small and negligible in the middle. It's a feeling he's grown used to and he's learned to use it to his advantage.  
  
So he makes himself negligible now and forces himself to forget.  
  
***  
  
He remembers what it was like to be little, listening to his father teaching his mother how to use a telephone. He remembers his father being astonished that she'd never used one before. Sometimes it's funny to be a half-blood. Most of the time, though, it isn't.  
  
_"You're an idiot," he tells Regulus, staring (with the same detached sort of fascination that he now employs in his once in a week--or month--cases) at the Dark Mark now etched into the other boy's skin like some macabre tattoo. "And we might as well start planning your funeral now, you altruistic bastard. Tell me--" And here he throws his arms wide, twirling them like a conductor following music. "_ How _did that old bastard convince you to do something so..."  
  
_ Stupid _, he'd been about to say. He'd never finished his sentence. Regulus was staring at the Mark, upper teeth working over lower lip in that way that he was so familiar with. Grey eyes clouded with worry, framed by black hair and the silver and green of his uniform.  
  
"I might as well tell you goodbye now," he says, and the backs of his eyes burn. Regulus looks up at him before reaching up to undo the fastenings of his cloak.  
  
"You're cold," Regulus tells him, pale and frowning. He reached up and straightened Greg's hat and right in that second Greg might have wanted to kiss him, possibly to say that goodbye that couldn't seem to find its way out of his chest. But he doesn't. It's a regret he'll carry for the rest of his life.  
  
"No, I'm not," he denies, the burning spreading down from his eyes to his gut, the acidic sensation of fear roiling and churning like he'd drank sour milk. But Regulus disagrees, pulling the cloak off square shoulders and placing it around his own rounder ones. Lily always complained about his slouching.  
  
"It's not bad to be tall," she'd tell him, pulling him into a straighter position. "It's not bad to stand out."_  
  
Yes, it is, _he'd always wanted to tell her._ And I do it enough without trying.   
  
_He wouldn't though. Couldn't bring himself to reject her caring gestures. To make her go away._  
  
***  
  
He watches, his brain and his vision in a sort of sideways leaning fog, as Wilson scoops eggs onto his plate. He'd follow the conversation Wilson is having with Cuddy, but that would require concentration and he just can't bring himself to fake any right now. The date on the calendar is mocking him, a surreal glow to it from across the kitchen. He'd like to think he was imagining it, but he can't let it go.  
  
Tomorrow was November. All Saints Day. Today was October. All Hallows Eve. The inconsistency of those names tickled Lily terribly when he and Regulus first pointed it out to her. He tries not to remember her laugh because today Lily died and it makes him bleed inside. He's tempted to ask Jimmy to do some exploratory surgery. Maybe an 'insert prefix here'-dectomy would lessen the heaviness pulling on his viscera. It's been twenty-five years but that doesn't feel right. It doesn't seem more than a minute.  
  
Someone is touching him. He sits listlessly as Cuddy's fingers trace his collar, her lips alighting on the back of his head for fleeing moments until she and Wilson go to the hospital. He's never been very in-depth about them, but she and Wilson don't seem to mind. They let him mourn in silence and space. He always gets to take these three days off. His team won't be calling. There are never any cases taken in the end of October. It's a firm rule, one Chase knows well and was quick to inform Cameron and Foreman of. The consequences of breaking that law are well-versed throughout the hospital. No one so much as asks for a consult or even a packet of sugar (like they'd ever ask for that) lest they drown in House's clinic hours for the next month.  
  
He's thankful, even if he can't seem to say so.  
  
His mother calls him every day this time of year. She's no stranger to telephone usage by now but still prefers to use owl post most days. It's how they usually communicate. She feels, however, that it's important for him to hear her voice on certain occasions.  
  
"You're eating," she says (never phrasing it as a question as though asking would make him say no just because) her telephone voice always louder than her usual speaking tone. She seems convinced that he can't hear her quite as well despite the fact that she's been using telephones for over forty years now. Still, he doesn't mind. It keeps him grounded in the conversation and doesn't let his thoughts carry him away. He relishes the tether, even if he can't admit that he needs it.  
  
"Yes, Mom," he says, his voice quiet, eyes burning and bloodshot. He ate the eggs Wilson cooked him this morning. Drank the strong coffee Cuddy made. He remembers introducing Lily and Regulus to coffee and beer, remembers the way their faces twisted at the unfamiliar tastes. The way he laughed as Lily struggled to swallow the beer and not spit. How Regulus choked on his coffee the first time and added a pound of sugar and even more milk to his cups thereafter. He almost threw the mug at the wall, but managed to restrain himself this time. Last year, Wilson wasn't so lucky and spent thirty minutes cleaning up ceramic shards and caffeine off most of the kitchen surfaces. He tried to say he was sorry, but all that wanted out was screams. He shook inside and waited until that night. Pounded Lisa, then Jimmy into the mattress, trying to use love as a cover for despair. Or perhaps not. He still doesn't know and isn't interested in pondering the question.  
  
"I love you," his mother tells him, and he nods, wishing like he does every year that he had his fireplace connected to the Floo Network for this one moment. But that would defeat the purpose of having defected in the first place, so he clenches his eyes shut and leans against the back of his couch. "I love you, too."  
  
He doesn't ask about how Wales is. He doesn't want to know.  
  
***  
  
He figures Cuddy and Wilson wonder if they were ever more than friends. They weren't, he knows, but that didn't stop curiosity from making its rounds. The memory of Regulus' skin on his is fresh as Jimmy's lips wander over the back of his neck. Lisa's hands on him, her breath in his ear and he recalls Lily's flaming hair brushing across his shoulders as she rose and fell above him. Jimmy's fingers around his wrist are Regulus's and he has to open his eyes and look the older man in the eye to get the facts straight.  
  
But crushes and inquiries aside, they were his firsts. He was Cuddy's, and neither of them were Wilson's (House doesn't call him the Hospital Whore for nothing), but there's only so much of an indentation that can be filled.  
  
It's not for lack of trying and he's reminded as he lets his hands follow Jimmy's over Lisa's body, loving her moans and gasps and the way she clung to him with sweat-slick hands. The feeling of Jimmy's hair brushing against his back they crashed together, Jimmy into him, he into Lisa. It was almost perfect.  
  
***  


_"So when's the wedding?" He asked cheerily and Sirius goes to answer for half a second before Remus stomps on Sirius' foot and they both send him identical glares of 'We are_ not _together!' irritation.  
  
He smothers a chuckle and continues on toward Transfiguration.  
  
***  
  
"House. Do you_ really _think I'd be here if it weren't of dire importance?"  
  
"_ Of dire importance, _you say, oh great Half-Blood Prince? Lucius finally managed to knock you up, I see. The resemblance is uncanny." He smirks until he realizes the kid is too damned scared to take offense. He's practically pissing his pants, his eyes glued almost hypnotically to the pestle and bowl on House's desk. Probably because it's the only thing he can immediately recognize in this office. That knowledge gives House a tiny sliver of satisfaction at having hidden himself so completely in something so foreign to them.  
  
"If you're done--"  
  
"What the fuck do you expect me to do, Snape?" he asks, contempt thick in his voice and managing to cover up the burgeoning concern that's building now.  
  
"I need--"  
  
"Safe passage, refuge, all that shit--yeah, I_ get _that, you fucking moron. You've got balls of titanium, coming here. Is Peter hiding in your pocket, writing notes in the lining of your robes? Going to report to Daddy as soon as--"  
  
The blood has drained out of Snape's already sallow face, giving him a dead, papery sort of look. House is pleased to note he's started to shake almost imperceptibly.  
  
"House."  
  
"You killed her." His voice is frigid, his blue eyes even more so. "You killed them both."  
  
It's a moment before Snape says anything, but House is able to detect a change in the timbre of the greasy git's voice. "I...had nothing to...do with..."  
  
"Yeah, you didn't do anything, did you? You let him die. You told Dumbledore you'd protect him. You didn't. That monster, Greyback, tore him apart. MacNair finished the fucking job and gave his ax a hummer as a reward. He loves his little harbinger of death_ just _that much. Now you want me to do better for you. Eat me."  
  
The desperation that flashes across Snape's face makes him think for a moment that the bastard might actually consider it. He's a little sickened, just now.  
  
"Don't help me, then," Snape says and it's clear that it is the last thing House expects him to say. "Help him." Snape frowns, giving Draco a look. "He's done nothing to deserve this."  
  
"Well, then, I guess it's his bad luck that he has you to look out for him, isn't it?"  
  
He wants Snape to say something, to at least give him the courtesy of a curse. The Leg-Locker or _Diffindo_ would do nicely.  
  
"Yes, it is."  
  
The darkness and anger in Snape's eyes has drained away. Only exhaustion and...guilt...are left. It's rather unnerving to see, actually.  
  
_ What the fuck did you do? _He decides he doesn't want to know. He learned Legilimency and Occlumency for a reason and this was certainly a time to use at least one of them. He analyzes the Periodic Table of Elements instead of figuring out Snape's motivations, which leads to him thinking about flirting with Cuddy under the cover of biochemistry as a teaching assistant. He's always had a soft spot for bleach ( _Sodium hypochlorite (NaClO)--your father's lab coats were never so bright, Cuddles..._ ), but tries not to think about Cuddy's breasts while Snape is standing there and trying to see his thoughts. Memories of Cuddy are his, damn it, and they're going to stay that way.  
  
"You hypocritical bastard," House bites out, giving Snape a withering glare for good measure. He spends a good five minutes bitching, but shoves two sets of scrubs into Snape's arms nonetheless. He wanted to give Snape an open-back gown and have them both admitted, but that would have required entering both Snape and Draco's information and all that crap into the system. The only two people he could afford to tell were going to have to be it. It is the first and last favor Severus Snape has ever and will ever owe him. Hopefully, the same will bode true for Draco Malfoy, as well.  
  
That night, House phones his mother from his office and explains to her the plan in Italian. He doesn't know whether or not to pity these two, who will soon spend so much time in his father's company. He decides to split it down the middle and feel bad for Draco, who's the enigma of the two. The kid is practically a stranger, after all, and House can just see the innocence dripping off him despite all the posturing he wants to do. He wonders if Draco knows anything at all about pretending to be a Muggle. Short of giving the kid a crash course in Muggle Studies, he settles for teaching him what basics he can at the moment.  
  
"I know how to flush a toilet, sir," Draco tells him flatly, annoyed further by House's subsequent smirk.  
  
"Now, now, I know these things_ look _simple but, really, you can never be too careful." Draco has to suppress a scowl and almost manages it. Not quite, though, and House counts it as a victory.  
  
"Shut up, House," Snape snarls, trying to look threatening in pink scrubs but failing spectacularly. It's an effort made in vain. House knows Snape's jealous because he gave Draco green ones.  
  
Before they leave, he casts the Fidelus Charm on himself. His wand_ ('Ash, phoenix feather, twelve and one-half inches long...excellent wand for charms, Mr. House...') _is cold in his fingers, but feels as though he held it just yesterday instead of sixteen years before. He really doesn't think Snape will enjoy Nyack, but figures he gets what he pays for. Then it occurs to House that he's doing this completely free of charge._  
  
Fuck. _He throws Snape another filthy look and they each Apparate to Nyack, New York. It's Draco's first time in a Muggle neighborhood and his disdain is apparent.  
  
"If you have a plan, Whitesnake, now would be an excellent time for show and tell."  
  
Draco is confused by the reference and House rolls his eyes. "Didn't your parents at least send you to primary school? Or did they want to get a head start on trying to turn you into a sociopath?"  
  
Draco doesn't answer, instead concentrating with all his might on the concrete echoing below their feet.  
  
They turn the corner onto House's parents' street and immediately see the porch light of the House residence shining in the darkness of two am.  
  
"Never mind. Look, kid, I don't know exactly what to tell you, but for the next few weeks, you don't speak unless spoken to. You will wear what my mother buys you at the PX--"  
  
Draco gives him another confused look. House scowls in irritation. "Never mind what that is. Just...be polite. Take up something to help pass the time. The piano does wonders on that front. And..." he runs a hand through hair already unruly (his mother always called it a glimpse into that whirling dervish otherwise known as his brain. His father called it--and him--a rat's nest that defied every regulation in the book) hair. "D...don't piss off my father, alright? That's the best advice I can give you. Whatever he tells you to do, you do it. No questions. No complaints. And if he's working on some fucking thing, don't ask him about it. Just go...occupy yourself elsewhere. And if you go out, make sure you're back at five pm, sharp or you won't be eating dinner."  
  
Draco stares at him for a moment,slightly apprehensive, but then that practiced blank mask falls over his face. It's something he knows well, masks.  
  
Then he stops and turns to face Snape fully, his face blank, eyes bright with anger. "If you get my mother harmed in any way, shape, or form--Jesus won't be able to save you. Is that understood?"  
  
It doesn't matter that he's on the disbelieving side of agnostic or that these are two card-carrying atheists he's talking to. He only cares that his mother makes it through this safely._  
  
_He'd changed clothes, stopping off at his apartment and dressing all in black. His_ Boondocks Saints _t-shirt seems strangely appropriate._  
  
  
And Shepherds we shall be,  
For thee, my Lord, for thee.  
Power hath descended forth from thy hand,  
So our feet may swifly carry out thy command.  
And we shall flow a river forth to thee,  
And teeming with souls, shall it ever be.  
  
In Nominae Patris, et filli, et Spiritus Sancti.  
  
Amen. _  
  
He repeats the words to other prayers, as well. One military prayer (the irony never fails to amuse him) he learned from his lapsed Catholic father as a small child. He's found the Saints' prayer to be surprisingly useful in conjuction with the Hippocratic Oath, and the Kaddish of his childhood Shabbat nights spent in synagogue with his mother. He'd wondered all sorts of things about all the meanings of what was later considered a creation myth by those who came after. He still doesn't know what to believe and hates that whoever's in charge, wherever they are...could be so...coldly, calcuatingly detached from what was happening right under their noses.  
  
He doesn't know the answer and isn't in any particular hurry to find out.  
  
The ones he's learned from his mother (and Lisa and Jimmy), though, stand out the most. He doesn't know why he clings to them the way he does, as they don't seem to have any relevance in his life that he can see. But right this second, it seems fitting. _  
  
"Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha olam, she hehiyanu v'kiy'manu v'higi'anu la z'man ha zeh."  
  
_"What the bloody--"  
  
House whips out his hand and points it directly at Snape's chest. _ Silencio _he thinks and Snape's voice is cut off midsnark. "Shut up. I was praying. I know you don't give a damn what the hell's going on with you, but I'd like to at least pretend things might be a little okay. Allow me my denial. It's the least you owe me."  
  
Then he knocks on the door, three times fast, two times slow. It opens immediately and House is thrust inside by a brown-haired witch in pajamas and a bathrobe, her feet in slippers.  
  
"Jesus, Mom, you could have told me you were sleeping."  
  
"Come in, Greg--" she doesn't waste time with pleasantries and that's good. She gives Snape and Draco each a quick once-over. There's a quick look of motherly pity for Draco, but an even quicker flash of...anger, sadness, hatred...for Snape and he can't quite tell which but now isn't the time to mull it over. He ducks into the house (the first his parents bought together after his father, a Full Bird Colonel, finally retired), immediately dropping onto the arm of the couch like he always does and enjoying the quick admonishment he gets from his mother before sliding down onto the cushion.  
  
"You're half-starved to death, both of you," she says to him and Draco, ignoring Snape and it makes House want to chuckle a bit. His mother can be cold when she puts her mind to it and it's always an interesting sight just who she directs the draft at.  
  
She retrieves her wand from the living room table and beckons the three of them into the kitchen before seating Draco and Snape at the table. House stops cold in the doorway when he realizes his father is sitting there fully-dressed and waiting for an explanation. He doesn't have one and it's not his to give anyway.  
  
"Gregory," his father says, laying the newspaper down in front of him and eyeing both Snape and Draco, who--and he didn't think this was possible--pales a bit more. "You look a damned mess."  
  
He resists the urge to roll his eyes. "Hi, Dad. I'm shitty. Thanks for asking."  
  
"Don't swear, Greg," his mother scolds, giving her wand a bit of a flourish and letting a thick sauce (he would guess alfredo mushroom from the look and smell) flow from it into a pot. A larger one already has tortellini boiling away. "And sit down. You haven't eaten in God knows how long."  
  
Greg sighs, but does as he's told. He motions for Draco to do the same and resigns himself when his mother places two heaping plates of pasta in front of them. Then she gives Snape another long, cold look but sighs abruptly before pulling out another chair for him. "Eat," Blythe House orders, placing another plate before him.  
  
Snape looks massively uncomfortable and House takes the time to let the flavor melt the heaven on his palate into a delicious gooey mess as he chews. His mouth is closed, though, because he _does_ have home training, no matter how often he demonstrates otherwise. The silence is thick and uncomfortable and House enjoys every moment of it, staring at Snape's face as though he were the latest episode of_ General Hospital. _Snape scowls deeply, but eats the food he's presented with. Draco takes a gingerly bite before overwhelming hunger gives in and he eats himself into an exhausted haze.___  
  
Oh, this is going to be good.  
  
***  
  
...TBC...  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  
Author's notes:

Everything from the previous chapter still stands.

[Synaesthesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) is an actual neurological phenomenon that involves the senses and a sort of unintended integration of two or more as a result of stimuli in the surrounding environment. It seems to go along with Sensory Integration Disorder, but appears to be much more fun.

* * *

**Excuse**  
 _By Angelfirenze_  
  
 **Summary:** It was a terrible sort of relief. One he felt guilty about accepting. It was difficult, and begrudgingly interesting as he explained himself to Dickinson. He's sure the shrink would have called for the men in white coats to come get him if he hadn't had his wand.  
  
***  
  
 _...Wake up and face me...don't play dead, 'cause maybe...someday I will walk away and say...You disappoint me...Maybe you're better off this way..._  
  
It's his first session with Dickinson after All Hallows. The shrink has, of course, noticed the sharp downswing in his mood since the last session, when his mood and perspective started to take that taciturn dip that even the worst spasm couldn't seem to achieve. Has noticed he's barely looked at the snacks offered. Notes the way both Cuddy and Wilson are hovering outside Dickinson's office as though afraid to leave. He's on the floor in a corner today, thankful leg pain never got in the way of that anymore. It's a full hour before he says anything. Dickinson watched as he fidgeted with the wand holster under his right sleeve, an interested expression on his face.  
  
"Do you know what magic is?" House asks after an hour of total silence, Lily and Regulus and Hogwarts and Godric's Hollow and Severus and Drake and his mother and his father flashing through his mind so fast, he thinks he might be sick if he had a full stomach. Jimmy and Lisa had ordered Compazine for him that morning, insisting he needed the sleep in addition to the stillness it would give his gut. He doesn't even remember if he agreed or not, but he remembers watching listlessly as Jimmy prepared the dose, injecting the antiemetic and watching nervously as he drifted off to sleep. He doesn't remember much after that. Formless dreams on mute. It was the only good thing about sedatives that he could recall. He no longer woke up gasping, his heart pounding its way out of his chest. Instead he just...floated, as though his misery were hovering around him, but not actually touching him. He feels like he should be checking for Dementors or something.  
  
It was a terrible sort of relief. One he felt guilty about accepting. It was difficult, and begrudgingly interesting as he explained himself to Dickinson. He's sure the shrink would have called for the men in white coats to come get him if he hadn't had his wand.  
  
"The Statute of Secrecy," he said softly, using it to draw glowing lines of light in the air. "Doesn't specify what 'close friends or family' is. Besides..." he shrugs. "It hurts. I want the hurt to stop, right?" He looked at Dickinson, then, expecting fear or something. The quiet understanding on the other man's face was surprising to say the least.  
  
"You feel guilty about wanting to stop missing them so badly."  
  
House's eyes drifted back to the ceiling. He sighed. "They haunt me. They're not ghosts. Happy people don't become ghosts."  
  
Then he thinks for a moment, those words cluttering up his thought process and making it feel like he has cystic fibrosis in his brain, with the memories like so much phlegm, making it heavy and viscous and damned near impossible to get thoughts in or out. "They wouldn't have become ghosts. Death is only the next step in a process--it's logical and they knew it was coming. They only worried for Harry..." He breathes. "For me. It's an equation we won't know the answer to until it's time to get it."  
  
Dickinson gives him a look he thinks is thoughtful. "You feel confident in that assessment. That everything is like mathematics and that even religion figures into that equation somewhere--an explanation--or maybe even a gene or anomaly in the chromosomes...an answer for why some people believe, some don't, for why some people--like you, it seems--believe it's impossible to know the answer so it's useless to worry about it until such time when it's relevant, which certainly isn't now."  
  
House frowns. "I have more pertinent things to be obsessed over, obviously." Namely, the way his entire chest cavity feels flooded with grief and that the dam will break without the reinforcements it so desperately needs. What those 'reinforcements' would be made of, he has no idea. He doesn't even really care. "I...want to live again. Thinking about the past and the future is..." He runs his hands through his hair. "I don't know. It's the memories that won't go away. I see them in the way Lisa teases me at work. The way Jimmy gets _so worried_ when I'm in pain for whatever reason. I wanted to have a Vicodin that night. I wanted a spasm."  
  
And he cringes because it's the same reason it took so long for anyone to believe him about the pain in the first place. _Drug-seeking behavior..._  
  
"God, I'm pathetic." He laughs then and the sound is harsh on his ears. Forced. "I finally get them to understand and then start doing the very shit that had them doubting me in the first place."  
  
"I don't think you wanted the Vicodin," Dickinson says in that quiet, calm voice he's grown so used to. "You said you wanted a spasm."  
  
"An excuse."  
  
"But you didn't want the Vicodin for the hurt of loss. You wanted it for the physical pain that a spasm would induce. You wanted to have a reason _to take_ one. You didn't, though, did you?"  
  
House stares at him, a little confused as to what he's getting at and not liking it. "No. What the hell does that have to do with anything?"  
  
"Everything," Dickinson says, that word hanging in the air like a cloud of smoke. "Your brain was occupied with the memories of your friends, creating pain. What do you think would have happened if you didn't miss them?"  
  
House stares for a moment before a cold look settles over his eyes and he looks down at his withered leg. "That doesn't make any sense. Usually psychosomatic pain is a response _to_ intense emotion. You're saying that my being depressed _saved_ me from a spasm?"  
  
"Dr. House," Dickinson says, addressing him by his title the way he does whenever he wants to make sure a particular--usually medically related--fact sinks in. "You've already proven to be an anomaly on many fronts regarding pain. You have to remember that most people--and I'm sure, most wizards--don't use pain as an activity. It doesn't enter into their usual time-table. Most people _don't have_ a time-table. Your pathological need to occupy yourself is for your own safety and this is a part of that. What would be helpful to you is beginning to sift through those memories, using the good to counteract the bad."  
  
He thinks, then, of Occlumency and Legilimency. "I already know how to sift through my memories. Layer and hide them. Build a whole environment to hide them _in_. My mother first taught me how to do that when I was five. I think she was trying to help me learn to occupy myself so that I didn't get into trouble with my father. It's called Occlumency, where you create a sort of storage system for your thoughts and can examine them at will or hide them from those you don't want to see them. And Legilimency is sort of the opposite. You digging through someone else's thoughts and using them to your advantage."  
  
"I take it your mother is a witch," Dickinson says as though he hears this sort of thing every day. House nods.  
  
"Pure-blood. My father is a Muggle--like you. Non-magical people like you, Lisa, and Jimmy are called Muggles. Lily was...Muggleborn. Her husband James was pure-blooded. Regulus was pure-blooded, as was his brother, Sirius. Remus--this werewolf I know--nice guy, takes care of Harry like he's his own--is half-blooded like me, Severus, and Harry."  
  
He doesn't explain who Severus, Remus, or Harry are, though. Dickinson doesn't ask. And he flinches, then, because the tightness in his chest just increased another inch or five.  
  
"This is important in the magical world--blood status." Dickinson states everything like a fact, but House knows he only asks questions.  
  
"It used to be. I wouldn't know anymore. I haven't had anything to do with the wizarding world in..." He gestures vaguely, then reaches down and uses his arms to push himself away from the wall so he can slide into a supine position on the floor. "But Lord Vibrator is dead, so I don't think it'd be a big thing anymore." But then he regrets his choice of words. Vibrators are good things and don't deserve to be blamed for the megalomania and psychopathic tendencies of others.  
  
"The Dark Tosser," he amends, momentarily adopting the British accent he'd had at the time. Then he lets his voice slide back into the New Jersey accent he's had for nearly a decade. "The Dark Tosser killed my best friend--my sister, practically--Lily. One of the Death Eaters--his followers, that sociopathic lot--killed Regulus. Two of them, actually. Fenrir Greyback was another werewolf, a sick son of a bitch who ate children for snacks and used their broken bones to pick masticated flesh out of his teeth. He was the one who bit Remus when he was five. Walden MacNair finished the job. Hacked what was left of Regulus open like a fucking pumpkin. I saw the report, the photographs--one of my Healer--I was finishing up training to be a Mediwizard--fellows at the time did his examination before his funeral--"  
  
His speech is rushed, disjointed. His thoughts are overlapping one another, clashing together like badly played notes and he sits up sharply, then, suddenly aware that he's shaking violently.  
  
"Do you want some water?" Dickinson asks, his face still in that careful mask.  
  
"Got any firewhiskey?" House bites out, a bitter laugh following. "Of course you don't. You're a muggle. You don't know what the fuck firewhiskey _is._ "  
  
He climbs slowly to his feet, using the wall to leverage himself into a standing position before grabbing his cane and beginning to pace in his uneven gait around the room.  
  
 _...See the animal in its cage that you built...Are you sure which side you're on?...Better not look him too closely in the eyes...Are you sure what side of the glass you are on..._  
  
He thinks back to when he left Snape and Drake at his parents' house. After being force-fed and having showers, Snape had elected to sleep on the couch in the den, which House found hilarious because his father had finally convinced his mother to buy a leather one and that had to be uncomfortable as hell. As it was, House had woken up sometime in the dark. A quick look at the lighted dial of his watch told him it was three forty-five. His side hurt. _Thank you, bladder._  
  
After relieving himself, he wandered back past the den to find Snape fiddling with the remote control for the television.  
  
 _"Put that down before you blow it up," he growled, coming over and snatching the plastic apparatus out of Snape's hands. "You never answered my question."  
  
"How did I manage to find you?" Snape had frowned for a moment before something approaching mirth had come to adorn his pallid face. "There's something to be said, obviously, for hiding in the Muggle world. The Dark Lord--"  
  
"Voldemort. You're in this house, in my presence, you call it Voldemort."  
  
"Ah, yes," And here Snape chuckled. "'Fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself.'"  
  
"If you can't say the name of the monster who murdered everyone you care about, you didn't deserve them in the first place." He didn't snarl, though. He was tired. Annoyed, but exhausted. "Voldemort."  
  
"Fine," Snape had agreed in clipped tones. "Voldemort will never come here. He hates everything to do with Muggles, obviously. Will cling to magic with every fiber of his unnatural being. Which is why you came back, of course. Why I did."  
  
"Why your mother left in the first place," House says and Snape looks at him with something like surprise. "You forget, my mother knew of yours--Purebloods are like that. She feels bad for you, you know. She thinks you wouldn't be this way if things had gone differently. The problem with that is that everyone would be another way if things had gone differently. And there's no way to tell which way things_ should have _gone. 'Should have' is a relative term. So is 'trust.' And 'love,' for that matter. 'Common sense'--"  
  
"Ah, yes," and here Snape actually bites back a chuckle. "Everything is relative with you, isn't it? Nothing is ever concrete--"  
  
"Yeah, a right philosopher, I am. Listen, science is concrete. Medicine is concrete. Senses are concrete. Input. It's feelings and emotions that are the problem. They cause attachment, which changes the output--the outcome. Memories can make anything whatever you want--all that's required is the will to change something to make it fit what you want. People like my father, like Voldemort...forget you can't do that with other people. Personally, I think if someone had just gotten ahold of old Voldie and done a little localized Obliviation--or, perhaps, go the Muggle route and do a partial lobectomy--hell, a lobotomy--just remove any trace of personality. Destroy any sense of self...then we wouldn't have this problem."  
  
Snape had actually laughed, then. It was a little scary, really._  
  
"You still believe that, don't you?" Dickinson asks him now and Severus's broken, bleeding body flashes before his eyes.  
  
"Not really. It's not true, actually. Removing memories doesn't affect the emotions that govern them. Tearing out the neocortex and destroying a person doesn’t mean removing all emotions. The base instincts are still there buried deep in the reptilian brain. All the anger and aggression would still be there. I think I was just trying to make myself feel better--which I suck at, by the way."  
  
Dickinson nods. "You hate this Severus Snape person?"  
  
House sighs, wanting to say 'yes, unequivocably,' but knowing it to be untrue, really. "I don't know. He cost me two of the few people who mean more to me than any others, but I don't know what I would have done in his position. And he was my friend, too. I miss him, too. So much has happened...too much..."  
  
"You find it difficult to put yourself in other people's perspectives or even to make a decision about something you haven't experienced yourself. This ability you fostered, Legilimency...you don't use it to manipulate people...just to attempt to understand them. Otherwise, you won't."  
  
House's gaze flickers up from the quarters he seems to have dug out of his pocket and is playing with. He doesn't remember doing that. He sees a pen lying on a nearby side table and grabs it, taking it apart and putting it back together again in moments.  
  
"I don't get why people care so much, what otthers think of them. My father cares so much about his reputation--why? He calls the guys he served with 'his brothers,' says they share a bond closer than blood. But I think it's bullshit. He can't tell me that if he landed in the hospital tomorrow, any of those assholes--because most of them were assholes--would drop everything and rush off to Nyack, cramming the hospital halls, just waiting to see him. He doesn't know what family fucking is."  
  
"But you do," Dickinson says and Lily, Regulus, his mother, Severus, Jimmy, Lisa, Remus, Drake, and Harry flash again through his mind. All his problems with his leg. Even though he wouldn't allow them to come see him--because they'd certainly asked--Remus, Drake, and Harry had all sent him 'Get Well' cards. Harry's had actually come with a wizard chess set from Ron Weasley and some wonderfully complicated magical puzzle that Hermione Granger had made up for him. Drake, of all people, had sent him a new game for his Nintendo DS. His time in the muggle world had apparently made a good impression. House had beaten the game after two days and had managed to email Drake about it before Jimmy revoked his computer privileges for that 'Chihuahua-cide' stunt. Ron's brothers, Fred and George, sent him a 'Conflagration Deluxe' and told him to use it wisely. For the first time since he'd been little, he'd looked forward to the Fourth of July. Jimmy and Lisa had stared in awe, ooh-ing and ahh-ing like little kids, and Lisa had wondered anxiously if the apartment was going to catch on fire and he had smiled.  
  
"Yeah," is all he says.  
  
***  
  
He was never much of a talker, really. Everyone at the hospital thinks he has a big mouth, but that can be (and is, exhaustingly) faked. Jimmy and Lisa know that, given the opportunity, he'll go days without saying a word. When he first met Lisa, there in the Gerald R. Ford Library at U of M, he hadn't actually said anything to her. She was sitting at his regular table by the window and he'd sat down in his usual seat, removing his bag and unpacking it, placing everything he needed all over the table and Lisa had watched for five full minutes as he said nothing, simply reading.  
  
 _"Excuse me," she said and he'd still not looked at her. He'd been doing his lesson plan for the biology class he was subbing later that evening--ironically, one she'd attended--and didn't look up from his scribbled notes. He supposed she'd gotten fed up somewhere along the line because the next thing he knew, she had smacked her hand down in the middle of his notes. He'd looked up then, to see those dark blue eyes he'd come to know so well, glaring at him in righteous indignation.  
  
"You don't know if I was waiting for someone or--"  
  
"We've been here for--" he checked his watch. "Twenty-five minutes, most of which you've spent being annoyed with me for sitting at what is my usual table. If I'd intercepted someone, they would have been here by now. If someone was here, and I interrupted you, they'd've been back by now. No one's coming. Sit back down. You need to finish studying for the exam I'm proctoring for you tonight."  
  
She'd stared at him for the next ten seconds, and he couldn't tell if she was angry or not or even if _she _could tell if she was angry or not. Finally, though, she dropped back into her seat, an irritated sulk settling over her now.  
  
 _...You've been working, you've been hiding...And you look half-dead, half the time..._  
  
"You still could have asked--"  
  
"Why ask if I already know the answer?"  
  
"But you don't_ know-- _"  
  
"Yes, I did."_  
  
He wishes now that she would have thrown something at him. She certainly has since then. Then something occurs to him.  
  
"Why haven't you asked your dear secretary out there for commitment papers?" House's gaze is on Dickinson, the other man's eyebrow rising as if to punctuate his question. "Or called Jimmy and Lisa in here to discuss my obvious lapse in sanity?"  
  
Dickinson inhales, exhales, then gestures toward the wand in House's hand. "Well, to be fair, it _is_ quite...I want to say 'galling,' but I don't think that's the right term for it. Obviously, whether magic is real or a figment of your imagination--which, considering the demonstration you put on for me, I'd say it isn't--it's obviously a deeply ingrained part of you. Rather like your being the son of a career military officer. If magic wasn't a part of your life, if the military hadn't been...you'd be a completely different person. Despite your profound gift for imagination--"  
  
"You mean lying like a damned rug."  
  
And here Dickinson laughs. "Dr. House, you don't lie--not for nefarious purposes. From what James has told me, you've only lied in jest or if you felt the benefit sincerely outweighed the risk. Ego--despite what your colleagues seem to believe--is not a factor in how you live your life. You don't own a motorcycle because you think it makes you look sexy."  
  
And here House laughs with Dickinson. "Stop hitting on me. What would your husband think?"  
  
Dickinson laughs even harder at that. "My point is that if you bought that motorcycle for how it looks, then you never would have gotten one with a huge scrape on the side that, in your own words, 'looks like crap.' You bought it for the same reason you do most things. To distract yourself and shape your sensory input into something you're free to enjoy. And when I say 'gift for imagination,' something you told me about when your mother taught you the piano comes to mind. You told me she said it was like a story that you could tell any way you wanted. How did her description make you feel?"  
  
House takes a deep breath and remembers being small. Remembers pushing those keys and the sounds they made. The colors he saw with the sounds. It was magical.  
  
Then he laughs. "Music isn't magic."  
  
"But they produce the same feelings in you, those two things."  
  
"They make up a picture, for me," House says, then, thinking of how F sharp is his favorite shade of medium blue. "In my head. Or in front of my eyes. Behind them. Something. I've never really been able to describe it."  
  
"You mean you see the notes as you play them, like a rainbow or a palette of colors."  
  
House nods, then, and plays a few invisible notes in the air before him. "I didn't even think about it when I was little. I told my mom that sounds--especially music--made colors and I think she thought I was just saying stuff. Apparently, I used to make up songs about things. Anyway, she would sing to me and I'd see splotches of color, like someone was painting something in front of me."  
  
"Did you think it just went along with your magic?"  
  
"No. Usually, accidental magic has a detrimental effect, unless someone is put in a dangerous situation. I got into an argument with my father when I was ten and broke every window in the house. I really got it for that."  
  
"He beat you."  
  
House just nods, scowling again. "He used to tell my mother, 'It's nothing my father didn't do to me.' Like that was supposed to make me fucking feel better--" Then he laughs harshly again. "But when has he ever cared about that? And it's never occurred to him that he's even more screwed up than I am if he's justifying treating me like shit. I hate it when people try to justify hurting others. As though they have a right to do it. Self-defense is one thing. But look at me--"  
  
And Dickinson does, takes in the thin, partially wasted man before him. "My father is a Marine, weighs twice as much as I did when I was in fucking college, and could snap me like a fucking twig. I was four fucking years old, what the hell-- _how_ can you justify that?"  
  
"I think you're discounting your own strength," Dickinson tells him in a neutral tone and memories of the bruises he gave Jimmy during his EMG flash behind his eyes.  
  
"I didn't mean to hurt Wilson," House murmurs, disgusted with himself all over again. "I'm sorry."  
  
"I have no doubt in my mind that James has completely forgiven you for that _accidental_ offense. No doubt, he doesn't blame you in the slightest. He's simply relieved you took the comfort he offered. He knows how hard that was for you. I meant, Dr. House, your strength of will. What interests me is your unsure position on whether you actually deserved such treatment or not."  
  
"What?"  
  
"On the one hand, you understand that his behavior toward you was wrong and completely out of proportion with anything you might have done to receive such punishment in the first place. On the other hand, you seem to believe that you're incapable of doing things properly in the first place and that if you'd only done it right the first time, it never would have happened."  
  
 _You brought this on yourself, son._  
  
"The problem with that line of thinking is the fact that your father never told you what the right--in _his_ eyes--thing to do was in the first place, did he?"  
  
House shakes his head, slowly lowering himself to the floor again, taking comfort in the feeling of the solid wall behind him, warmed with central heating against the bitter chill outside.  
  
"He just expected you--a small child with no conceivable knowledge of how the world worked--or his version of it, seemingly--to know. He was very inconsistent in that regard."  
  
"He hated when I asked questions. When I touched things. Did experiments. If I knew where something he was looking for was, that was just luck. There is no such thing as luck."  
  
 _You know what your problem is, Greg? You just don't know how lucky you are._  
  
Then he removes his wand from the holster, draws runes in the air. They convalesce into a sort of glowing cube before solidifying and falling into his lap. A new puzzle to solve.  
  
"How did he feel about your being a wizard?"  
  
House concentrates on locking the pieces together into shapes, watching them glow anew as he finishes creating something else. Like Play-Doh, only better. He doesn't look at Dickinson. It makes the ache in his chest come back.  
  
"He didn't have much of a choice. He married a witch. It was nice like the piano. Something my mom and I could do, but he couldn't."  
  
"A sort of secret between the two of you."  
  
House shrugs.  
  
 _...I'm going to stay inside...I'm going to stay inside for good..._  
  
"Your father was stationed in England when you were a boy. When you first came to know these people." Dickinson knows that House is a brat. Knows what that means. Knows what his father used to do to him if he got too closely underfoot because children should be seen and not heard. Books were for big people. The piano, too.  
  
"Dr. House," Dickinson says and House looks up, the image of his father in his full-dress uniform wafting through his mind like smoke. "You were thinking of your father."  
  
"Whatever. He's not the focus here."  
  
"He's obviously at least a part of it. He's certainly part of why you're who you are." And House frowns at that because his father is like the Coxsackie virus in an unfortunate peds patient, invading his heart and destroying the cells one by one, slashing them and breaking them open. He should be dead. Or, at least, he feels that way.  
  
"You're not angry at her?"  
  
House looks at Dickinson again. "What?"  
  
"Your mother. She didn't protect you from your father. Didn't stop him from hurting you. Never noticed the marks he left on you. Let him make you sleep in the backyard, take ice baths--"  
  
"Shut up," House snarls, then, hurling the puzzle away. It hits the wall and breaks into pieces, taking bits of the wall with it. House flicks his wand and the damage to the wall is undone, the puzzle lying still broken where it landed. "Just shut up."  
  
He doesn't say a word for the rest of the session.  
  
 _...Don't want to stay inside...for good, for good, for good, for good, for good, for good, for good...fuck off...for good..._  
  
...TBC...[  
](http://community.livejournal.com/pathologies/21429.html)[](http://angelfirenze.livejournal.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

  
Author's notes: Everything for Part I still stands and both Silja B. and KidsNurse continue to be made of awesome.  


* * *

**Excuse**  
 _By Angelfirenze_  
  
 **Note:** If any of you paid close attention during  Half-Blood Prince (or have easy access to your copy), then you'll know what potion House is brewing.  
  
 _...Is this more than you bargained for, yeah--oh, don't mind me, I'm watching you two from the closet...Wishing to be the friction in your jeans..._  
  
He remembers when he first told each of them. Wilson had believed House was perpetrating the prank of all pranks--had given him commendations for consistency and commitment. Then House had pulled out his wand and turned Wilson's coffee cup into a fluffy bunny rabbit with a large egg shaped black spot on its back. Wilson had stared, mouth gaping until House started counting the flies landing in it. They'd given the rabbit to Lisa's niece and pretended he came from a farm upstate. After that, he had been privy to furtive looks of wonder and, eventually, a seemingly resigned acceptance to the fact that there were books on the shelves containing illustrations that rivaled the best film. That nearly every animal he'd been told as a child was a figment of his dreams and an overactive imagination (and many he'd never dreamed of--he'd stared at the fifty-forth edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, goggling at all the animals he couldn't believe existed; House, himself, was partial to Thestrals for reasons none of them had yet to understand) was kept in check by something called **The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures** and that a little tidbit or two of history from House may include the fact that in 1932, a real, live, very hungry Welsh Green dragon attacked a beach full of sunbathers in Ilfracombe, Devon, England. That a vacationing family of wizards saved the entire muggle population present that day from becoming its dinner before casting the largest batch of Memory Modification charms on record. According to Newt Scamander's book, they'd been amply rewarded by the British Ministry of Magic with something called the Order of Merlin. Sometimes a large barn owl would come flying through the (always open--thanks to a waterproofing charm--in the spring and summer, meticulously timed in the autumn and winter) window bearing a tightly furled piece of yellowed paper that resembled the ancient medical texts he'd examined on microfilm in college. Letters from Blythe House, he'd later learned. She was a witch, like her son was a wizard. Eventually, it just became another nuance. Like how House's favorite color was a shade of blue different from Cuddy's eyes by a number of degrees. Like how every year for a while House drank a little more, swallowed an extra Vicodin or two, died a little more inside. Until the collapse, Wilson had watched, seemingly helpless, as the cycle of vague yet always and undeniably present pain exacerbated the already cruel threshold Greg (and Jimmy and Lisa) was forced to cross.  
  
At least there had always been a way to try to help him forget. He knows, now, that House hates depending on drugs to simply feel...normal. He may have gone to school in the seventies, when drug use was practically a to-do list of self-inflicted debauchery, but he hadn't joined in any of it. Wilson later learned that there was too much outside interference (House's words, not his--he didn't seem able to define mass murder in such insignificant terms) to be idiotic enough to purposely dull one's senses. You wound up the occupant of a coffin that way. He had always assumed that House had just been one of the many who did it just because he could. He was never so surprised (and relieved) to be wrong. He knows, now, that happiness (and love) in and of itself, is a drug to House. More powerful than any government-grown strain of marijuana. More powerful than meperidine or hydrocodone or methylenedioxymethamphetamine or morphine or ethanol. Better than food or video games. It was the simple act of getting to do those things, of watching Steve McQueen running around in his little orange exercise ball at one forty-five in the morning. It was not having to leave work early, not having to call in sick because he couldn't get out of bed and into the shower. It was in bickering with Lisa, reciprocal mockery with Jimmy. That was heaven.  
  
"Happiness..." Greg once told him, breathing deeply as Jimmy's arms circled his back and they drifted in that strange, comfortable aura of sleeping wakefulness one Tuesday summer morning. "Should be bottled and sold by the Food and Drug Administration. Behind the counter at the pharmacy. Where all the other 'good shit' is. It should be illegal. Probably already is. Helpless giggling should be given a narcotic rating and monitored regularly by properly-trained professionals."  
  
He knows House probably really does believe that. For some reason, the thought only makes him smile.  
  
***  
  
Cuddy had, as usual, been miles more subtle in her reaction. She had asked for proof and House had provided, conjuring a blue and bronze striped scarf--it had been snowstorming in Ann Arbor and Cuddy had left hers in a cab--and wrapped it gently around her throat. She had asked what he was doing here, in the regular world--or what passed for it--if he had a whole other one he was free to enjoy. His face had fallen, then, and he had turned away from her.  
  
"Trying to forget," he'd said softly, slipping his wand back up his sleeve into the holster she now knew was always there. "Operative words..." he'd added in a heavy voice, pressing his hand against the coldness of the glass window he'd ended up in front of. He'd given her full-run of his books and she'd read them with a scholar's eye, mystified and bitter at what she'd never be able to use herself. She did, however, let him brew her a potion to increase her concentration. He had murmured that he had last drank some during his final examinations his fifth and seventh years. It took him six years to tell her where those examinations had taken place. Eight to find out what any of his scores had been.  
  
Apparently, twelve Ordinary Wizarding Levels (let alone Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests) was quite the accomplishment from the effusive reaction Blythe had given when Greg had (begrudgingly) shown Lisa the old letters declaring his results the winter after Cuddy had promoted him and given him his department. He'd gripped his cane and stared at the blue and bronze prefect badge with his name engraved under a crest reflecting a lion, serpent, badger, and raven surrounding a large, ornate letter 'H.'  
  
Sometimes she wanted to ask him what he missed most. Most of the time, though, she was afraid to remind him.  
  
***  
  
 _Is it still me that makes you sweat?...Am I who you think about in bed?...When the lights are dim and your hands are shaking as you're sliding off your dress..._  
  
 **1976**  
  
"You're ruining my reputation, you know. Dirtying me all up. Regulus Alphard Black, you should be ashamed of yourself."  
  
"Yes, but you don't care--and are you really planning to complain about that? Just now?"  
  
"P--" He felt his voice hitch as Regulus' teeth nipped his ear. "Perhaps not."  
  
"Didn't think so. Besides, you like being dirty."  
  
"You hate to be clean."  
  
"Takes all the--" Regulus has shifted. "Fun out of life."  
  
Erections could be trouble sometimes, of that he was now quite certain. Regret, too, was a problem. He is reasonably worried that suffering both at the same time might (maybe, possibly could, probably will) be dangerous to his health. It's a little difficult to concentrate on the latter, though, when the former is so clearly being encouraged.  
  
"You're a cheeky one," he tries to smirk as Regulus' thumb brushes over his head, sending a sharp throb coursing through him and pulling a groan from somewhere near his diaphragm.  
  
"Hypocrite. And you like me when I'm cheeky," Regulus murmurs, his other hand coming to slide into the undone fly of Greg's jeans and grip the older boy's waist to pull him closer. Lips and teeth raise little patterns in the skin of his throat and Greg thinks he might fall apart. If this was what panicking feels like, he figures, then he will happily do so for the rest of his life.  
  
"You're damned lucky," Greg growls, moaning as Regulus' hand begins a slow stroke that threatens to send him crashing to the floor.  
  
"You don't believe in luck," Regulus reminds him, stepping back and dropping to his knees. Greg reaches up without thought and tangles his hands in Regulus' hair as a marvelous combination of heat and wetness claims him. He thrusts in earnest, no longer aware or even caring if what he says makes any sort of sense. Faintly, he registers Regulus' words and the change of sensation as hands replace that mouth. "Now, shut up, will you? You asked for a distraction, you bastard, and you're getting a damned good one. Be thankful."  
  
A strangled sort of gasp escapes him as he ejaculates, hard and fast, most of the slurry that results disappearing and whatever's left warming around his cock. Regulus leans into him, thrusting back, his own pace quickening as his mouth comes to connect with Greg's. It's an interesting feeling, tasting himself on Regulus' tongue--one he has yet to fully get used to. He can, he decides, as he lets his own hand guide itself along the length pushing insistently against his stomach. Regulus' own more restrained groan and subsequent shudder are the only warning he's given before Regulus comes, as well, and they fall against one another in a sated, sticky daze. He'll need a shower later. He doesn't care.  
  
It's a moment before a small, hitching whimper sounds nearby and both Regulus Black and Gregory House look over to find a flushed and embarrassed Lily Evans staring at them, eyes wide. Regulus leans back against the wall, that damnable grin still in place as Greg yanks his trousers back up, a mortified blush of his own forming despite his best intention.  
  
Lily's hair is all he sees next as she dashes away and that night as he's idling in his four-poster, he takes the time to imagine what could have happened if she'd stayed.  
  
 _Taking more than one deep breath, Greg manages to get himself together enough to shuffle back over to her side, leaning over her and gently slowing her hand. Her irritated expression alone would be enough to make him hard again if he wasn't so obviously spent. He decides the least he can do is help her along. Stilling her hand altogether, he lets his trousers fall back down before sliding them and his boxer shorts the rest of the way off. Removing his shirt, as well, it falls to the floor and he moves to hover over her, watching--completely mesmerized--as the dark heat surrounded by soft flame sends another shudder rolling over him.  
  
But he's not _that_ considerate, he knows, and he takes the time to smile. "Say please," he orders, his hand coming to barely slide over her. Lily blinks at him for a moment before growling, "You sodding Yank--" she begins, but Greg breaks off her burgeoning tirade with a kiss and it morphs into a moan.  
  
"Now, now, that's not very nice," Regulus admonishes behind them (apparently not giving a damn that he's hanging half out of his trousers, a drunken yet lecherous expression on his face), and Greg nods in agreement. "Greg was only trying to help."  
  
Lily's moan is all the answer she can seem to give as Greg's fingers dance around her entrance, harkening permission but never accepting. "Please," she whispers, breathless and slick beneath him and Greg smiles. "Now, was that so difficult?"  
  
But before she can answer, his face disappears from her line of vision and she looks down to see the back of brown hair and pale neck as she hooks her legs around his shoulders, her head falling back against the sheets._  
  
He bites back a moan and thrusts into his sweaty palm, trying not to wake anyone around. It's all he can do not to scream.  
  
***  
  
Lisa does scream, hard and long, as Jimmy fucks her against the (once cold, now quite warm) wooden headboard of House's bed, her hair falling around his shoulders. Greg is buried to the hilt behind them, pressed flat against Jimmy's back, his hands gripping both Lisa's and Jimmy's waists hard enough to leave bruises. He loves the marks he puts on them. Adores the silk scarves and starched-collar shirts they wear to hide them. Sometimes the thought of it's enough to make him kick the kids out of his office so he can have a little alone time with the blinds closed. Wilson caught him once and smuggled him downstairs, then gasped into the fabric of Cuddy's chair as they put her soundproofed office to good use. It was a glorious ending to Paperfest 2007 and the expression on Lisa's face when she woke up on her couch and caught them at it only added to the fun. It hadn't been that ardous an effort to get her to come around to their line of thinking. He still remembers the way the steel handles of her drawers dug so sharply into his back. Some kinds of pain can be good, he's learned.  
  
But then he will have nightmares and wake up gasping names and places and strange words that once shot a line of fire clear across the room. He had calmly extinguished and repaired her drapes before going to make himself a pungent concoction of some sort on the stove. It smelled like bleach and she was worried what he was thinking. She tried to read the labels on the vials, tried to figure out what they contained, but they were written in languages she didn't speak--some of them, she was convinced, weren't even human. She'd finally mustered up the courage to ask him about his 'cooking' the night after Vogler left, when she found him in the lab, having hijacked a Bunsen burner and set up a miniature Potions lab. He carried magical tools everywhere with him, she'd discovered, even if he didn't like to use them. A lifetime's worth of being trained in the art of advanced preparation didn't abate simply because one had issues (continually renewed subscriptions, really) with their past. He even kept a collapsible cauldron in his office closet. She had wondered why he didn't use it now.  
  
"A melted cauldron--or one at all, actually--would be hard to explain to a lab tech, don't you think?" House had asked softly, not looking up from measuring what looked like crushed insect shells of some sort with a pocket-sized set of scales. She'd nodded wearily, wishing she'd had more champagne. "So. Ms. Buzzkill--what brings you here?"  
  
She'd thought he was one to talk about killing any buzzes, but again decided to let it go. "I wondered where you'd disappeared off to. I didn't hear any loud cracking noises, so I figured I had a little time. That left your favorite hiding places, and--by the way--I really don't think it's a good idea to court sexual harassment charges yet _again_ by continuing to hide in the third-floor womens' bathroom."  
  
"No one ever uses it."  
  
"That would be because you've hung that 'Out of Order' sign on the door. I keep telling maintenance to take it down, but they tell me they can't get it off the door. You wouldn't have anything to do with that, now, would you?"  
  
He hadn't answered, opting instead to decrease the heat on the Bunsen burner so that whatever sweet-smelling thing (it resembled the cinnamon rolls she liked to buy on the weekends) he was percolating stopped boiling. He removed a tiny packet of strange-looking beans before reaching again into his jacket, now having produced a silver scapel she immediately recognized as the one Jimmy gave Greg for Chrismukkah the previous year. He removed the plastic cover of the tip and used the side of the blade to crush the beans in his hands. They immediately released a gush of liquid--so much that Cuddy couldn't understand how a tiny bean could hold that much--and the potion turned a pale shade of lilac. For the next half-hour, she watched as he stirred it counter-clockwise, while adding a clockwise stir every seventh counter-clockwise stir. Eventually the potion turned completely clear.  
  
She'd taken an annoyed breath, sick of him and his games for one day. "What are you doing?" she asked in a tired, irritated tone that he paid no outward attention to.  
  
"Potion-making," was House's succint reply.  
  
"Yeah, I'd figured," she sighed, now anxious for some reason. House rarely ever mentioned actually _doing_ magic, let alone been so abrupt about it. It was one of the rare subjects he would never elaborate on, instead relying on concrete 'yes or no' answers that never acknowledged anything. It was maddening at the best of times, but horribly so now.  
  
"So, what? Ordinary, Muggle-made catastrophes and explosions aren't good enough for you anymore?"  
  
He gripped the counter, then, leaning down carefully to stare into the flames under the burner without causing himself further pain. "Would you have really sacrificed me, if it came down to it?"  
  
She stared at him, astonished that he would ask such a thing when she'd so clearly just proved otherwise. "I...just--GAVE UP ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS FOR YOU! You have your damned answer!"  
  
She hadn't expected to scream like that. He seemed to, though, because he didn't react at all except to dip a ladle into his simmering potion and tipping a measured amount into a nearby glass vial before stoppering the top. "I don't give a damn about money, Cuddy, you of all people know that." His voice and eyes were hard now and she wanted to walk over and simply strangle him.  
  
"Does it ever get to you?" he asked, then, and she was shocked at the profound exhaustion and anger she heard in his tone. "Is there ever a time where you wish you could just...erase your existence? Is there any wound you just can't heal? Tell me your principles, your drive to help people, to heal...mean more to you than some whale of--wait," he paused and grimaced. "That's an insult to whales. More than some smug asshole's hundred million dollars. Tell me there's something you would lie for. Is there?"  
  
She'd continued staring at him, a blank sort of fuzz flowing through her head. After a few moments grappling, she sighed. "I don't know how you expect me to answer that."  
  
He'd sighed, then, raising the vial to the fluorescent lighting above their heads and tipping the vial back and forth so that the water-like solution sloshed like one of those therapeutic toys that psychiatrists kept in their offices. _Escape plan. Dillinger not included._  
  
"Let me know when you do," he's said quietly. And then he'd left her alone.  
  
 _...You can have my isolation...You can have the hate that it brings...You can have my absence of faith...You can have my everything..._  
  
...TBC...


	4. Chapter 4

  
Author's notes: Final note that everything from Part I still stands.  


* * *

**Excuse**  
 _By Angelfirenze_  
  
 **Disclaimer:** Not mine. Shore, Singer, Jacobs, and Rowling are the architects of this amalgam. Blame them. Oh, and thank for the shrink with the unfortunate name. Plus, there's lyrics, of course, a partial quote from _Dogma_ , and another quote from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Oh, yeah, and remember that part this season where they dabbled into why House doesn't use his cane in his left hand? Yeah, forget that ever happened. Although, considering this story forgets that the entire third season ever happened, I guess that'd be a given...  
  
 **Summary:** Then it suddenly hits John and he remembers what Gregory had said that had so enraged him. _"You're aware what my job means. What that means for this family."_  
  
And Gregory John Christopher House had laughed, bitterness and sarcasm in that voice his father (John Christopher) hadn't known the boy could achieve. _"I am aware. I just don't care."_  
  
 **Rating:** Yesterday was Smut Tuesday. That's all you need to know.  
  
 _...I see you lying next to me...With words I thought I'd never speak...Awake and unafraid...Asleep or dead..._  
  
It's difficult to think about the past and he tries not to. It's easiest when he's listening to Jimmy humming while cooking dinner. When he's half-heartedly (albeit soundly) trouncing Cuddy at Jeopardy. It gets sketchy when he's listening as Lisa's moans mingle with Jimmy's gasps and sooner than later they're all a sticky mess. He fucks with his eyes open because he doesn't want to forget, wants to know where and what he is and to understand the same for them. _Needs_ to know. Sometimes he gets desperate and the world widens in a nightmarish fashion. Sometimes, he can't see or think past the feelings threatening to tear him apart. He needs them, he knows, and wonders why they seem to need him, too.  
  
He's afraid to ask, however, the very thought making his throat constrict painfully and reminding him of the anaphylactic shock he experienced that horrible summer when he couldn't decide whether he even wanted to die or not. If Jimmy had been a little slower in noticing his reaction to the TPN mixture, he wouldn't be here now. He's confused about what to feel about that now and again. He thinks they might know because Jimmy's lips on his temple and Lisa's hand on his neck keep him breathing and conscious. They won't let him drown, he's sure.  
  
He hasn't always believed and they worry he'll forget. He's hates it when he gets like this because it isn't like he can reassure them. He doesn't have the confidence to answer when he doesn't get it himself.  
  
***  
  
 **1981**  
  
John House stands in front of the closed door. He regrets the marks the crowbar has left on the wood--he'll have to pay to have it repaired, himself--but the situation calling for drastic action still hasn't been resolved and he feels he needs to regain control of Greg somehow. He listens with distinct dread to the sounds of the crashes and shattering of glass that plainly shows the boy is destroying the room before John as thoroughly as the explosion of emotion seemingly engulfing him. He hasn't said a word, Greg, in over twelve hours. He'd screamed at first, when his mother had tried to prod him into the guest bedroom here at their current housing assignment. Blythe had ducked as Greg thrashed and threw himself away from her, slamming the door shut and proceeding to tear the room apart. Blythe has been in the kitchen for hours now, brewing some damned thing she insists is the only way to calm Greg down. That's assuming, of course, they'll be able to get close enough to restrain him. He doesn't think that magic will work this time. He knows that Blythe refuses to use any spells to restrain Greg. That it's inhumane and barbaric. John believes, however, that sometimes force is necessary. The crowbar didn't get the door open and Blythe said that Greg must have locked it with magic, still being in possession of his wand if not his senses.  
  
Absentmindedly, his fingers brush over the faint burn scar on the back of his right hand and unbidden, a memory of when Greg was thirteen flashes through his head.  
  
 _The boy had been getting mouthier with every passing year and seemed to think that his Bar Mitzvah eleven months earlier meant that he was a real man and had the right to get things his way and say what he wanted. John had received a transfer out of England to Japan and that meant Greg was going to have to leave the school he'd been attending for the previous three and a half years. It was the same as last time but, apparently, Greg hadn't seen it that way. John can't remember, exactly, what Gregory had said--only that it had been disrespectful and completely unacceptable. His reaction had been swift and uncontrolled. The next thing he remembers is Greg lying, unconscious and bleeding, against the wall of his bedroom. There was blood down the front of his shirt, his nose was broken. The door had been open and sometime after whatever had happened, Blythe had appeared in the doorway, her wand out, and had rushed to Greg's side.  
  
"You need to leave," she'd told John, not looking at him. Her wand was moving over and around Greg's face, making the blood on his skin and clothing disappear. The flow had stopped, but the nose itself was still a crooked mess with a small gash on the side. John stood there and stared as Blythe tended to the insolent little bastard, completely ignoring what he'd done in the first place.  
  
"He--"  
  
"Leave. Now!" Blythe had hissed, turning more quickly than he'd thought possible and a thin line of white flame lashed out and caught him on the back of his hand. He'd gasped and stared at her (a chill falling over him at the anger and ferocity he saw in her eyes), clutching his hand to his chest. He'd left then, mindlessly going to the car and throwing himself in the driver's seat, staring at the burn on his hand. He'd needed to go to the infirmary to get patched up. He'd lied and said it was from a training accident. The base ENT had examined his hand, declared the slash a second degree burn, and given him ointment and a wrap to help keep it sterile. He'd come home that night to find Greg sitting in his pajamas at his desk, doing an essay or whatever on some of that damned parchment with a quill and ink. His nose, it seemed, had been mended by Blythe. John had fumed and stalked into the kitchen to find an empty place setting where his dinner usually sat at this time.  
  
The plate was bare, his glass likewise unfilled. Suddenly, though, he saw the tip of Blythe's wand pointed directly at his heart.  
  
"I don't care what he tells you, you will never attack my son again, do you understand?" Her voice was hard and cold; her eyes even moreso. "You're telling him he'll have to leave Hogwarts for somewhere new, again. He's tired of it. He has the right to be weary of always having to pick up and leave. It's the middle of the year, Christmas holidays, almost his birthday--though you've never been bothered about that...too close to your precious Christmas, of course, and Chanukah be damned--" And here, she grips the edge of the table hard enough that they both hear it creak. Blythe breathes deeply and manages to continue. "He's going to miss the remainder of his third year and he's just started his electives. The only way he'll be able to continue is through correspondence between myself and the Hogwarts staff because the Matamori School doesn't accept students in the middle of term. No wizarding school does."  
  
"Sacrifices--"  
  
"I'm talking," Blythe had snapped, somehow managing to do so without changing the timbre of her voice. She reached down and picked up the hand she had burned earlier. Her hold was gentle, firm, but John could see in her eyes that a part of her seemed to want to break his wrist. To shatter it like he'd apparently done to Gregory.  
  
"You're in my head," John whispered, fear threading through his veins at the control his wife was wielding over him and the cascade of memories he tried so desperately to ignore. He'd hated it with every fiber of his being. His brother kicking him. _Greg...Gregory, please--_ His father, Christopher, dunking his head into the latrine, ignoring his pleas for mercy. John shivered again, a sob on the edge of his tongue, but he managed to hold it back. _You little pussy...Little shit...This'll learn you..._  
  
"I don't know who you think you are, but you will _never _lay a hand to my son ever again, for any reason. I don't_ care _what you think he deserves. He is not a toy for you to break."  
  
She had moved the wand to let it hover between his eyes and his breath had hitched in his chest. "I love you and you love me. We both love Gregory even if you can't seem to understand exactly what that means. If you touch him again, however, we're gone. It'll be a nice adventure trying to find a wife and son you have no recollection of, I assure you. Memory Modification spells can be very far-reaching indeed. You hurt him again and there isn't anything in this world that will save you. You talk about us making sacrifices. Perhaps it's time you made one. I won't let you destroy him the way they did you."_  
  
John suddenly registers that the noises behind Gregory's door have stopped. There is an eerie quiet pervading the entire house. Blythe had done some complicated thing earlier that she said ensures that no one hear or sees anything that goes on. She appears beside him, carrying a steaming mug of whatever she's been brewing. Holding the mug with one hand, she raises her wand with a flick and whispers, "Alohomora," at the locked door before them. The door creaks open and Gregory's crumpled, shivering body lies on the floor, his beautiful hands bloody and mangled. John feels his breath hitch in his throat at the utter damage Gregory has managed to do over the course of a few hours. The only things not broken in the room are the windows, though John feels a sick drop in his stomach as he realizes it wasn't for lack of trying. Gregory's blood is smeared over them in obvious attempts to smash them open. The mirror inside his wardrobe, however, hadn't been quite so fortunate and is lying shattered around Gregory's bleeding, scratched, unconscious form. Blythe had retrieved him from St. Mungo's herself, being told of the bone repair they'd had to do and that most of it had been fractures and minor breaks of his arms and right hand. His left shoulder, however, which now lies at an unnatural angle to his side, was still healing and now the prescription potions Gregory had been sent home with weren't going to alleviate all the damage, let alone the fresh injuries. Of that, she is certain.  
  
To this day, he cannot carry his body weight on that weakened left shoulder.  
  
Then it suddenly hits John and he remembers what Gregory had said that had so enraged him. _"You're aware what my job means. What that means for this family."  
  
And Gregory John Christopher House had laughed, bitterness and sarcasm in that voice his father (John Christopher) hadn't known the boy could achieve. "I am aware. I just don't care."_  
  
And he'd stared for a moment, astonishment giving to rage, and the rest had followed. And he'd never touched Gregory again.  
  
***  
  
 **December, 1973**  
  
 _...I never said I'd lie and wait forever...If I did, we'd be together now...I can't always just forget her, but she could try..._  
  
The next day Blythe packed Gregory a duffle bag and Side-Along Apparated with him to the Evans residence in Southampton, a letter from her both to him as well as to Lily's parents clutched in each of his hands. He still has the letter, along with others, sitting in that box with his ties.  
  
 _Dear Greg,  
  
I'm certain there's no way to conceal from you what your father did last night, as it happened to you and not myself, but I promise you that it will never happen again, under any circumstances. I give you my word that your father will never do anything like that to you again, for any reason, and that he will regret it if he tries.  
  
As it is, I think it's best that the two of you spend some time apart while you get yourselves sorted out and we prepare for this move. I know it's the last thing you want to do, as you're not certain what impact it will have on your course schedule or, indeed, your ambitions. I will make absolutely certain we do everything we can to keep you in-step with your schoolmates and that you graduate on time and finish whatever training you take up. In the meantime, Lily's parents have made it clear they'd be happy to let you stay a few weeks so that you can spend a little more time with her. I've included our new address in case she decides to send Muggle post, which shouldn't be difficult as she's a Muggleborn. The post owls won't be a problem, of course, but it would help to look as Muggle-like as possible so as not to arouse suspicions of any sort.  
  
What I want is for you and Lily to have fun and make the most of your time together. I've packed a camera in your bag so that you can have pictures of her when we're back in Japan. I know you'll enjoy being back there, as it's not the country that bothers you but the fact that you'll be separated from your friends and unable to attend Matamori in the meantime. I've arranged it with Headmaster Dumbledore and your Masters so that you can do independent study as you've done in the past for your Muggle classes until the fall term and attend Matamori afterward. When the time comes, you'll be able to sit your O.W.Ls and N.E.W.T.s, as well as learn to Apparate when it's time to earn your license. I'm going to go into Diagon Alley today and get your schoolbooks and whatever extras you will need for the coming years, as well as starting you a separate account at Gringott's for your finances. It will also be made clear that whatever Muggle money you wish to keep in your vault will be protected as well and, should you so desire, be available for direct deposit for whatever you need.  
  
That said, have fun and behave yourself. That means not cursing Lily's sister, whatever she says to you. Is that understood, young man? The Statute of Secrecy does still apply to you, whatever you may want to believe. This is not, by any means, that sort of 'emergency circumstance,' so don't even try it. BE GOOD.  
  
Love, Mom._  
  
***  
  
"We're happy to have you here, Greg, so just make yourself at home, dear." After Blythe had hugged Greg goodbye and spoken with the Evanses, Lily's mother had insisted on taking his coat and hanging it up by the doorway with the others. His boots were lined up beside the pile next to the kitchen door. He was wearing his uniform tie and a light blue shirt because his mother said he should look nice and because it was likely the last time he'd be able to wear it for a while so he acquiesced with only a half-hearted protest. Blythe had smiled and hugged him, telling him he would always be a Ravenclaw, whatever school he went to. Always be a wizard, wherever they were. He had hugged her back, managing to ignore the tears he could feel on his neck. He was taller than her by now, and she had to reach up to hug him. He didn't care.  
  
Lily was bouncing down the stairs wearing a jumper Greg had never seen before. It was new, bright Christmas red, and clashed horribly with her hair, but she didn't care and neither did he. She was beautiful in it. She giggled and handed him a box of Ice Mice as a hello and told him to come with her and have some lunch. Her mother had made chicken salad sandwiches for them and she insisted they tasted better than anything in the universe.  
  
"All kids say that about their mum's cooking," he smiled at her. "There's really no winner there. There can't be."  
  
"Yeah, well, in this house, there is." She stuck her tongue out at him and he'd laughed.  
  
"My mum sent some stuff, too," he told her, opening the wrapped bundle he carried in his hands. A warming charm had kept it from needing to be reheated.  
  
"Then we'll combine the two and have a nice feast," Mrs. Evans had declared, taking the package and unwrapping it. Gregory's favorite four-cheese and tomato paninis (he'd loved the places they'd lived for the food and the sights and Blythe always remembered his favorites), vegetarian pad thai with sesame seeds, as well as sunflower seeds and raisins she'd added herself. Hot chocolate because it was cold outside and he didn't like tea as much as she did.  
  
"Wow," Lily had whispered, surprised at the amount of food Blythe had sent along. "What's all this?"  
  
"Paninis, pad thai, and hot chocolate," Greg had murmured. "We've lived lots of places. My mum likes to cook lots of different things. Plus, we don't eat a lot of meat. My dad does, more than my mum and I."  
  
"She should be a chef," Lily told him, taking the large plate and setting it in the middle of the table. Greg tried to go help but Mr. Evans stopped him. "Greg, you're a guest and you're hungry. Sit down and rest. You look dead tired."  
  
It was true that he and his mother had woken up a few hours early so that she could pack his bag and make him food. He hadn't been able to sleep anyway and hardly minded. He hadn't realized until after they left that he hadn't taken a deep breath in nearly twelve hours that he could remember. He wished he didn't remember at all.  
  
Greg shook his head and tried to smile a little as Lily's mother placed a heaping plate with one of his mother's sandwiches, one of hers, a hard-boiled egg, and some hot chocolate in front of him with a gentle nudge to eat. He took a tentative bite and felt some of the tension ease. His mother's cooking was delicious, but so was Mrs. Evans'. There was no winner, no competition, and that made him feel better than anything else.  
  
Petunia Evans had joined them after a few minutes and she had stopped in the doorway, staring at Greg with accusatory grey eyes so unlike Regulus' it was difficult to believe they were the same color.  
  
"He's here," she'd said, a disdainful little tone in her voice and Greg had fought not to frown.  
  
"Petunia," Lily had hissed, glaring at her older sister and glancing at Greg, clearly expecting him to be offended. His face, however, was more amused than anything else. That dangerous little smirk he got when he was going to say something he wasn't going to regret was there and Lily wasn't sure whether or not she should intervene. He could take care of himself, she knew, just as Regulus could.  
  
"Don't worry, I won't curse you. I have better things to do," he'd said, and Petunia had frowned before marching over to the kitchen counter and pouring herself a cup of juice.  
  
"Petunia, aren't you going to welcome our guest?" Mr. Evans had asked, indignation coloring his tone.  
  
"Hello," Petunia had said, her tone flat and clipped. Greg had raised an eyebrow, the smirk on his face becoming a grin.  
  
"You know, hemorrhoids can be treated, given the proper time and medication, and if they're detected early enough, you might not even need surgery. And that pesky anal bleed will clear itself right up, so there's no need to be so downhearted."  
  
Petunia had choked on her juice then, and Lily had gasped and smacked Greg on the shoulder. Her parents had stared for a moment, blinking.  
  
"Just kidding," he'd smirked, feeling better already as Petunia tried to mop up the juice she'd spat all over herself and the counter.  
  
"You want to be a doctor," Mr. Evans had stated, and Greg could see from his memories that he was one, already. "What specialty?" He was trying not to laugh, himself, and Greg felt even better. Mrs. Evans sighed and went to help Petunia with her shirt, whispering something Greg couldn't hear in her ear.  
  
"I don't know yet, sir. Maybe infectious disease or something. But if I went that route, I think I'd really like to be a mediwizard, so there'll probably be more magical accidents to fix than anything like cancer or pneumonia. I'm not really certain yet. I'm still thinking of other ideas."  
  
Dr. Evans had grinned then, and promised to give him some of his old medical textbooks to take to Japan. "When you're ready, I'll send you whatever updated editions you want. Maybe wizards can use something we have, if they like."  
  
Greg had smiled and thanked him, meaning it, wondering if he could figure out a way to do that himself, and settled down to finish the rest of his meal. Afterward, Mrs. Evans had shown him the guest room and he'd mostly slept until dinnertime. When he'd woken up sometime in the mid-afternoon, Lily had curled up in the corner of his room, reading one of the texts he'd been given by her father. He'd smiled for the first time in so long and gone back to sleep.  
  
***  
  
 **1981**  
  
 _...I am bottled, fizzy water and you are shaking me up...You are a fingernail running down the chalkboard I thought I left in third grade...Now my only consolation is that this will not last forever, even though you're singing and thinking how 'well' you've got it made..._  
  
He pulls listlessly, uselessly at the restraints tethering him to this bed. His right arm is loose, wrapped at the wrist in a padded strap. His fingers, though, are in splints. The left is pinned under another larger blue strap that circles his entire chest and holds his arm down so it cannot be moved at all. His legs are bound at the ankles. He tries to care, but can't seem to get enough effort (courage) to do so. Around him, colors and lights are too bright, sounds too loud. It had been like this before, but he'd been able to ignore it. Now sensation pours over him like the cruelty of water-boarding and, like the poor son of a bitch being victimized, all he can do was lie there and take it. The helplessness slashes at him, taking greedy bites out of his soul and spitting whatever refuse it has left back into his face.  
  
Somewhere, broken fragments of memory float past his mind. Colors swim in his vision, blooming and wilting like flowers weighed down. He tries again to move and can't. Something...someone is speaking to him. He tries to focus on the sound, concentrating on the colors they create. He recognizes them. F sharp, medium blue. A piano. There was...a piano?  
  
Scarlet...A. "Yes, Greg, that's right. A." His little boy voice saying 'A.' Continuing onward through the rest of the alphabet and leaving the musical scales in his dust. _W, X, Y, and Z...Now, I know my ABC's, next time, won't you sing with me?_ His mother laughing and then a long cascade of notes.  
  
"I love you, my dear, dear, only boy." A whispered voice lingers in his ear and he finally registers a hand tenderly grasping his own. His hand starts to tingle in that deeply unpleasant way it does when he is held for too long and he tries to move away. He can't. He's just so...tired. He gives up, then, exhaustion and confusion taking his choice away as something...someone in white comes over and does something else over his head. His eyes slide shut and there is no more pain. The comforting voice is gone, too, now. The colors muted and their shadows swimming past the insides of his eyelids.  
  
Then he doesn't remember anything anymore for a long time.  
  
***  
  
 _...I wish we could open our eyes...To see in all directions at the same time...Oh, what a beautiful view...If you were never aware of what was around you...And it is true what you said...That I live like a hermit in my own head...But if the sun shines again...I'll pull the curtains and blinds and let the light in..._  
  
"You don't speak very much, do you, Mr. House?" Was that a question? The answer should be obvious.  
  
 _Doctor,_ he thinks mutinously. _Healer._ Then he remembers and his heart splits in two. _Breaker._ Lily's eyes open, staring blankly into space. James's glasses, broken and flung into a far corner of the room, covered in dust by the time he'd got there. And Harry...  
  
"You won't sign the--"  
  
"Suicide pact?" he snarls, his voice hoarse. He'd screamed the night before, so loudly and so long that hours later, he still can't say much; certainly not for long. He pulls listlessly at the scrubs he's dressed in. Red. The same for every other screwball in this place, wherever here is.  
  
"Not a pact. A pledge--"  
  
"If you idiots are too slow, then it's a pact. Telling some nurse I'm going to kill myself won't do shit. Not if I'm quicker than she is." He thinks about the nurses and how some of them were old and some of them were overweight. "I'm quicker than a lot of them."  
  
He can only whisper, but he makes it count.  
  
"Are you planning to kill yourself? Is that what you want to do?"  
  
 _Something you entertain...Entertaining death. Sounds like a movie. Or an unwanted guest, too stupid to take a hint and leave._  
  
"Trying to make me feel guilty? It's not like I'd care. I'd be dead. So it goes."  
  
 _You brought this on yourself, son..._  
  
He blinks. His father was the one who'd brought him here. John House had let his mother give him a Calming Draught after they'd found him and then everything was undefined, indistinct. He remembers her hand on his and then nothing. His father brought him here.  
  
"I'm just trying to understand." The shrink is a woman with grey eyes like Regulus. Red hair like Lily's. God is laughing at him, has to be.  
  
"Good fucking luck," he whispers and then he thinks about the petals on the hibiscus trees in Okinawa. The way they flutter in only a little bit of breeze, fly in a gale. And he can forget.  
  
His left arm is strapped securely to his chest, suspended in a padded sling. It twinges if he moves it too far in any direction, but mostly he ignores it. Except at night when he sees them, sees their blood. He hasn't slept without drugs in...long. He doesn't remember what day it is, what month. But he won't ask. If he doesn't ask, then he can hide all the better. He has to hide. It was the only way to... _make it all not true._ He can live again, maybe, if it isn't true.  
  
 _...I've become so numb, I can't feel you there...Become so tired, so much more aware..._  
  
...TBC...  
  
x-posted to and [my journal](http://angelfirenze.livejournal.com/)  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**Excuse**  
_By Angelfirenze_  
  
**Disclaimer:** I have only the vaguest idea of how adoption proceedings go, but from what I do know, they're frustrating as hell. I'll do my best. Partial quote from  The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.  
  
**Notes:** Special thanks to **leiascully** , **gahdzuks** , and **Silja** , and for their respective parts in making sure this made legal, logistical, and logical sense. Wouldn't want the Triumvirate to pull any muscles or anything nasty like that. It'd be a little difficult to hide from the rest of the staff... Also, the term 'septic' refers to 'septic tank,' which **Silja** tells me is Cockney Rhyming Slang for 'Yank.' I feel so flattered.  
  
_It's losing all my friends...It's losing them to drinking and to driving...Losing all my friends, but I got them back...I am not a man...At least now I can say that I am trying...But I hope you will forget things I still lack..._  
  
"So what's brought this on?" Jimmy's hand is tangling itself in Lisa's hair and they're both watching him. It's after midnight and the blinds are (always) drawn when they're together, especially at night. They're in Cuddy's office and Wilson's 'sure-fire' plan to distract House from the paperwork Cuddy had to do backfired in the worst way, but not until she was more than halfway done, so it wasn't a complete loss. He'll still be doing House's clinic hours for the week, but it's a sacrifice he's willing to make. House's long legs are propped up on the couch next to them and he's lying on his back on the floor, twirling his wand and his cane in each of his hands and somehow managing to thwart disaster.  
  
Greg shrugs and stares at the ceiling some more, a deep breath pulling itself from inside before he realizes it.  
  
"Something's going on with you," Lisa says and her voice is soft, careful. She knows he won't tell until he's good and ready (sometimes, on some things, he never is but that's okay) and that pushing and wheedling him only courts further distance.  
  
"You two have stating the obvious down pat," he murmurs, his eyes sliding shut. He wishes he had his iPod. He wishes Cuddy would leave so he could Summon the scotch he knows she keeps in the closet behind her desk but she knows he knows where it is and what's the point of secrecy if your plans are laid bare? Hm. Bare. He wishes Jimmy was naked.  
  
Hm. Naked Jimmy. Interesting, idling thought.  
  
"I'm oversexed," he says and Jimmy chokes on the sip of tepid coffee he'd been taking.  
  
"Figured that out, did you?" Lisa asks, but she's grinning with satisfaction and Greg knows she loves the fact that they keep him that way.  
  
"You certainly don't mind," Greg sighs and Lisa chuckles to herself and she can practically see the words forming before they're out of his mouth.  
  
"If you were that easy, you'd've slept with half the doctors on staff. It's Jimmy's job to be the Hospital Whore--I doubt he'd appreciate being overthrown. And then there's the fact that his crown wouldn't fit your head. The circumference is off and the gold would look terrible hanging around your neck. And, then there's the fact that you'd be wearing gold in the first place. Big Jewish no-no and you're more observant then we are."  
  
"Shut up, House," Jimmy and Lisa interject simultaneously, but he doesn't even falter. He expects them to try to shut him up and they expect him to ignore them. Comfortable patterns.  
  
"But I'm not interested in that," Greg says, his voice and face softening, and he looks at them (the wand and the cane both coming to a stop and being placed carefully on either side of him) before he pulls himself into a sitting position and eases his legs to the floor. He turns to the right and leans on his side against the bottom of the couch, watching as Jimmy comes to sit beside him. He leans over and lets his head rest on Jimmy's shoulder, turning and placing a kiss on the soft cloth covering it. "I think I'm going to give up wondering why you two are such masochists. It's not my business why you're hellbent on suffering. Either way, I benefit and you lose. If you two are--"  
  
Jimmy takes hold of his wrist and Regulus' eyes flash in his mind. "If you think we're losing then you don't know us very well, do you?"  
  
Greg gasps, then, and he wants to say that he doesn't know himself and that would mean that knowing them is extra work and they know how he feels about extra work (not really, but he wishes they'd believe it) but he's silent instead and completely still as Jimmy's lips meet his and leave the ghost of warmth on his (neverending) chill.  
  
"I can't be fixed," he whispers and Lisa's eyes are on them both. He laughs into the side of Jimmy's throat, then, trailing a hand upward and beginning to unknot one of those ubiquitous ties. This one is silver, black, and scarlet, silk as they are more often than not. The bundle of nerves in his stomach loosens some and he can't figure out why. "I don't want to be."  
  
He doesn't like being miserable but the idea of being acceptable as someone else would have him is equally unappealing, even repugnant.  
  
"We like you anyway," Lisa says and her voice is right behind his shoulder. He doesn't remember how she got there because he's too busy watching her take the tie from him and wrap it one-handed around their now-joined hands. Three hands, three sides, three strands in the same knot. "We love you and you love us. We didn't break you, but we've certainly bought you."  
  
"No returns after thirty days," Jimmy murmurs, a little smile on his face.  
  
"There's nothing wrong with being damaged goods," Lisa whispers, kissing Greg's ear and letting her free hand slide over the dual erections (one after another) now asserting themselves. She always was good at multi-tasking. He can't say the same for himself but her hands have undone his belt (always the same one made from black leather but she doesn’t complain about that or about his uncombed hair or his jacket sleeves being far too short) and he can't focus on much more than that warm hand on him.  
  
Jimmy's groan behind him and the pressure he feels now in the small of his back leaves him breathing deep and uneven. It's too hot in here, air conditioning and winter chill be damned. Maybe this would be a better idea on the balcony where it's cold.  
  
"None of us are interested in entertaining hypothermia or frostbite and you're not an exhibitionist," Lisa reminds him and he wonders if he said that aloud but her breath hitches wonderfully as the palm of his hand slides over the remains of this morning's fun and he disregards the particulars in favor of the larger concept. The already minor bruise is now pale and he loves that he can barely tell it's there. He wanted to leave more, but Jimmy distracted him. He's good at that, the bastard. Time wasn't important, at any rate. It's Saturday and she comes in late, anyway. What else could they do but take advantage?  
  
Greg blinks, then, before letting his eyes land on their bound hands and wondering why Lisa hasn't removed any of her clothing. Or, at least, loosened them. She seems content with just watching tonight and the thrill it gives him almost makes him groan, but he clenches his teeth and tries not to make any noise. The already soundproofed office has been Imperturbed in addition, but that's not the point. Things are never simple with him; he knows that better than anyone. That's just not the point.  
  
Her eyes and hands are on him and he never stops watching as she unbuttons his shirt, her hand then guiding him to do the same for Jimmy. The pants will stay. They know he loves the friction and Jimmy loves the challenge. Jimmy's on his knees behind them now and Lisa is in front of him. He loves the middle. Greg's back is damp where Jimmy's using his free hand on himself. He can't see and he wishes he could. His cock throbs because it's something he wants but can't have. Lisa still hasn't touched herself and he's starting to get the idea that she has no intention of it. The knowledge that her musk is wafting around him but that none of them will do anything about (and he's not the one with his hands on Jimmy) is torturous but welcome in a way he'd never realized before. He loves hating being out of control.  
  
Lisa's only concession to his frustration is having removed her pantyhose. Her heels are long gone, abandoned by the desk and they all know he wishes she would put them on. His chest tightens along with his balls as Lisa's mouth comes down to claim him and he can hear Jimmy's taunting chuckle behind him. They're enjoying his lack of control, revelling in the tables being turned. This was planned, damn them both.  
  
He can't possibly be anything close to angry right now. Not with Jimmy's cock sliding against his back (he's being _used_ , he knows, and the thought almost pulls another moan from him, but he holds it in) and Lisa's mouth engulfing him, the faint humming of her throat and the gentle scrape of her teeth sending vibrations through every inch of him and he wants to scream and they know it and are doing their damnedest to make it happen. He's biting his lip now, unable to tear his eyes away from the top of Lisa's head as she takes him all the way in and he wants so badly to scream, but can't.  
  
"Let it go," Jimmy whispers, stilling against Greg's back and kissing the side of his neck. He hasn't finished, Greg knows, and wonders why Jimmy's punishing himself like this. "You're safe." But he's not and they're not. No one ever is.  
  
Lisa's tongue is swirling around the tip of his head now and he can feel his balls tightening further. He's surprised he managed to hold on this long, but figures that if his will were worthless he wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. He can't say anything--doesn't even know why--but still stares as he finally comes, his breath coming in heaves as Lisa demurely swallows and sighs.  
  
"It's okay," she whispers when he begins to cry. She's untied herself from them now, standing up and walking to her desk. His eyes follow her bare feet, this empty feeling threatening to choke him to death. She returns with tissues out of the box on her desk and cleans him up. He can smell that she wants him in turn (can feel Jimmy still straining against his back, muted whimpers slipping out every few seconds) and can't understand why they're ignoring themselves for him. He shakes as their arms come up and surround him and everything is still and quiet and he thinks he might understand.  
  
"Why won't--" he starts, but Jimmy cuts him off.  
  
"You deserve this, Greg," Jimmy says, groaning inwardly as that ruddy cock brushes against Greg's back yet again. "You get to come first sometimes, too."  
  
"That's a double entendre," he murmurs, sighing. He can't bring himself to make better jokes, though, because he can barely see and his eyes feel like they're burning out inside his skull.  
  
"You're not useless," Lisa tells him, kissing him and his tears soundly, and he nods. Lisa has tied their hands together again and he's wiggling his fingers uselessly, trying to get purchase on any of theirs.  
  
"Prove it," he growls, his voice gutteral with arousal but softened with grief. Lisa raises an eyebrow at Jimmy whom he feels nod in return. They can give him this.  
  
"Use your left," Jimmy orders and Greg chuckles hoarsely, breathing deep and concentrating on guiding his hand into the minimal space Jimmy has afforded him.  
  
"Say it," Lisa commands, then, her face and voice contradicting one another and Greg whimpers and takes a breath.  
  
"I'm not useless." The words sound empty and hollow to him and Lisa frowns visibly.  
  
"Say it again," Jimmy snaps, and Greg flinches a bit. "And this time fucking mean it."  
  
"I'm not useless--I'm not fucking useless," Greg snaps back and apparently, they're satisfied because Jimmy kisses the uneven trim of his hairline (they nag him about haircuts and say they'll start calling him Shaggy and asking for directions to Coolsville, but he keeps forgetting) and gives him more room. The gasp he gets in return fills him with a strange sense of accomplishment. Lisa is shedding her own clothes, finally, and shifts onto him with practiced ease. He doesn't remember if his leg is there or not and can't really be bothered to care.  
  
"Bit of a sadist, though," Jimmy groans again as Greg's left hand fingers find their way into his boxers before stilling. It's obvious Greg enjoys being the cause of the problem and wants to take as long as possible to fix it. Greg loves it when they're at his mercy. _It's a damned good thing we're good at rewards_ , Jimmy thinks as he watches Greg's hand on him.  
  
"Please," Jimmy whispers and Greg smiles despite himself.  
  
"That wasn't so bad, was it?"  
  
_...I am not your friend...I am just a man who knows how to feel...I am not your friend...I'm not your lover, I'm not your family, yeah..._  
  
***  
  
He remembers the night Lily got married and his eyes burn. He remembers Sirius laughing raucously over ever-filling glasses of Ogden's and butterbeer. He remembers the way Remus elected to be the sane one and stay sober enough to get them all home safe and unSplinched. He remembers being sober, as well, but that it was not his choice. He had nursed a butterbeer, sighing into the glass and watching it refract light. He's not a happy drunk (a miserable son of a bitch, really. Some would say that he seemed to be drunk most of the time, if that was the case) and he hadn't wanted to ruin Lily's day (or James', when it got down to it). The idiot had finally fallen off his high horse and forgot that he wasn't the hotshot most seemed to think he was.   
  
Greg wondered if that time James had gotten the flu in sixth year had anything to do with it. When Madam Pomfrey had run out of Pepper-Up potion and had to wait while Slughorn replenished her supply.   
  
**1977**  
  
He'd found James vomiting in the first floor boys' loo on his way to the dungeons for N.E.W.T. Potions. He had sighed, a muttered 'idiot' a bit of salve on his (perpetually) irritated soul and had left James hanging over the toilet for the short walk it took to stride into the kitchens and tell the house elves he needed soda crackers or saltine, if they didn't have the former. The elves had complied graciously (Greg decided to ignore the way their ingrained terrible grammar grated on his nerves and simply concentrate on getting back to his 'patient.') and he'd made it back to James' side and told him to eat the crackers.  
  
"What the...hell...are those...going to do, arsehole?" James had groaned, giving Greg as vicious a glare as he could manage while covered in his own vomit.  
  
"Just eat the fucking crackers, you jumped up son of a bitch," he'd snarled, as always tiring quickly of James and his dismissive (among other things) attitude. He'd ripped open the package and shoved one or five into the dehydrated mouth before him. "They'll help."  
  
He'd backed away and sat on the floor then, twirling his wand in his fingers, and waited. Fifteen minutes later, he'd helped James up and waved his wand over James' ruined shirt, cleaning away the vomit and straightening his tie. James had glanced at him, unsure and actually _quiet_ for the first time that Greg could remember. James had washed his face and Greg had handed him the rest of the crackers.  
  
"Until Madam Pomfrey gets her new batch of Pepper-Up from Slughorn, don't go to class. You've got influenza. You're exhausted and won't be able to sleep through class like you need. You're flushed and clammy, dehydrated from all the puking you've been doing and you're hot to the touch. Since butterbeer is not approved for any health benefits, water and clear juice will have to do. If you get the urge to cough, try to make them as productive as possible. Pneumonia probably won't get you out of N.E.W.T classes for long."  
  
"How did you know about--"  
  
"Reading something other than quidditch magazines helps," Greg sighed, his tone lacking the usual contempt it held for the boy beside him. James moaned, swayed a bit, and Greg shoved another cracker in his mouth.  
  
"I'll tell Slughorn you're sick."  
  
And James had laughed weakly. "That's right, House. You and Evans and Sirius' brother...Slug Club royalty," James had needled and Greg had to resist the urge to elbow him in the gut.  
  
"Shut up about that," he commanded, his tone short and eyes narrowing. He was faintly aware that he'd taken on his father's militarized Ohioan accent and counted on James being too sick to notice.  
  
"How d'you do that?" James had murmured, his eyes sliding shut for a moment and his grip on Greg's arm tightening for a fraction of a second. "The voice thing."  
  
_Fuck._ "Voice thing? Care to be more specific, Potter?" He'd rolled his eyes but James hadn't noticed.  
  
"Your voice changes a lot. Sometimes..." he'd trailed off and Greg had slowed his pace. James had taken a deep breath, Greg counting the seconds until he thought the vertigo had passed, and sighed. "Sometimes you sound like you're from...somewhere else."  
  
And Greg had fought the urge to again roll his eyes. "I'm a military brat," he clarified, wishing the other bastard would shut up. "I _am_ from somewhere else--the New World, if you can remember what that is. But my dad's a United States Marine. It's why I spent two years in Japan and didn't come back until this year. My dad's stationed here again so Dumbledore let me come back."  
  
He didn't lie, exactly, but he hadn't told the entire truth, either. His father _was_ stationed here, somewhere, but he hadn't seen John House in months. He didn't want to elaborate and James hadn't earned it anyway. Never would, if his behavior was any indication. They were in front of the Fat Lady's portrait by then and Greg had slid out from under James' arm.  
  
"Don't forget what I told you to do. Eat the damned crackers."  
  
And James had waited until Greg had walked a suitable distance away before he climbed gingerly through the portrait hole and out of sight.  
  
Three days later, Greg had seen Severus Snape hanging three feet in the air, spinning like a top (swears and curses flying from his mouth, regardless) and acted, in his opinion, accordingly: he cursed them both thoroughly and threw a few choice insults their way, as well.  
  
Snape had landed on the ground and Greg had freed him from the Body-Bind James had placed on him beforehand. Sirius had come over, shoved him, and yelled something unintelligible. He'd calmly turned and Body-Bound Sirius before reaching out to help Severus to his feet. James was already standing and Greg concentrated on frog-marching Severus away in lieu of letting the rage that filled him make him do something he might not regret. Severus had tried to wriggle out of his grip, but Greg had ignored that, intent on getting themselves both back to the entrance hall. He could hear Regulus yelling something at Sirius but figured he'd find out later.  
  
For now, he shoved Severus forward and turned him around. He pulled out his wand and conjured a scrap of parchment with a single word written on it.  
  
_Levicorpus_  
  
"What--"  
  
"Get out of here," Greg snapped, looking around anxiously. While he was a prefect, Snape was not and while he could be seen traipsing the halls on a bright, sunny post-term day, Severus couldn't afford to court trouble.  
  
Snape had slunk away then, presumably back to the Slytherin common room, and he'd gone back outside, wondering about the ethics of turnabout and fair play.  
  
_...If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, you can find out firsthand what it's like to be me..._  
  
***   
  
**1979**  
  
James was watching him now, he figured. House had been staring into this same tumbler of butterbeer for probably an hour. He shrugged and leaned back, draining the glass and slamming it on the table. The _thunk_ it made satisfied him and he did it again.  
  
"I'll take good care of her," James' voice said above him and he looked up, scowling almost unconsciously. The bastard had loosened his bow tie and unfastened the first few buttons on his shirt.  
  
"You'd better, you bastard," he'd snarled before taking a deep breath. "Just get away from me. This is her day. Don't let me ruin it."  
  
And James had smiled and he hadn't expected it. He'd given James a look of slight puzzlement and James' smile had softened.  
  
"You're alright for a septic, yourself," James told him, clapping him on the shoulder. He didn't seem offended by House's subsequent flinch, but let go all the same. House held back a sigh and looked around. Remus was watching a thoroughly inebriated Sirius try to dance with a far more sober Lily. They caught each other's eye and shared a silent chuckle. Peter was off to the side, as usual, and House felt an unpleasant tingle go through him, as was common when he was confronted with Pettigrew's presence.  
  
He hadn't realized his downward shift in mood had registered on his face until James had spoken again, this time clearly annoyed. "Oh, come off it, House. When are you going to realize that Wormtail's alright? I don't know why you hate him, but--"  
  
"I just don't like him. I have that right."  
  
"Yeah, and a lot of people have it about you, if you recall," James' tone was definitely pissed off now. "Glass houses...well, I guess you'd know that one, wouldn't you?"  
  
House rolled his eyes and looked at James, took in the familiar visage of hair on end, hazel eyes, and those glasses. "My mother says 'congratulations'," he sighed, turning back to his drink.  
  
"Tell her we said thanks," James said, his voice softer again. "Look, all I ask is that you give Peter a chance. If you can give Sniv--"  
  
"Don't."  
  
And James had groaned. "Oh, _fine._ Snape, then. If you can get on alright with him, then I think you should be able to extend Peter the same courtesy."  
  
"Who told you _that_ lie? I can't stand the foul git much more than you can. Small doses are alright but, me, getting on well with Snape? Hardly."  
  
"Oh, hell, I don't know. Just...give Peter a break, won't you?"  
  
"Be a buddyroo," House had murmured, the thought occurring to him almost instantly, and James had given him a confused look.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Muggle book, Potter. Seriously, borrow one from Lily once in a while. She'll be glad to share."  
  
James had shaken his head, then, and Sirius had called him over to do something. House had waved him off, glad to be alone again. Lily was beautiful tonight, like every night, and she and James were going to be happy. He could almost hear the shock in Regulus' voice if he'd been here. The idea that Lily had gone from beginning to tolerate Potter to outright _love_ was still something they were trying to wrap their heads around. Either way, it was a moot point. There'd been a meeting tonight. Regulus had said   
that he'd gotten a bit deeper in, but Greg doesn't want to think about it. The idea of Regulus running around playing 007 (not that Regulus understood the reference) is still a sore spot and he avoids thinking about the risk involved to Regulus' life as much as possible. It's led to more than a fair share of fights, unfortunately, and makeup sex isn't a good enough bargain for him.  
  
Instead he watches as Sirius picks up Lily's garter from where she'd dropped it on a table after the removal ceremony and wishes he'd been the one to slip it off instead. He thinks he would have used his teeth.  
  
The thought makes him smile and he drains his glass of butterbeer, finally, before ordering another.  
  
***  
  
**1982**  
  
"Healer House, I realize that your circumstances and petition for the guardianship of Harry Potter warrant serious consideration, but considering your recent--"  
  
"My circumstances don't fucking matter!" House yelled, slamming a hand down on the administrator's desk. "I was there! I watched them draft their wills! Under _no_ circumstances was Harry supposed to be anywhere _near_ those arseholes and where does that twisted bastard put him? He leaves Harry right on their fucking doorstep! It'll be a nice lookout--"  
  
"Healer House, if you can't calm down, I'll be forced to have you escorted from the premises." The witch before him was calmer than he was, he'd give her that, and she hadn't flinched when his anger had caused the artificial window behind her to splinter and crack before it repaired itself (he'd wondered for half a second how an enchanted underground window could crack, considering it was a charm, but shook the thought away in favor of concentrating on what was important). He'd give her the benefit of belief that she wasn't completely incompetent at her job. It was getting increasingly difficult, but he'd do it.  
  
"Healer House, in light of recent events, I'm afraid we cannot allow you to take custody of the minor, Harry James Potter. As you are _not_ his legal godfather--" she hitched slightly at the thought of what had happened with Sirius Black. "And as the only other wizard who would otherwise be expected to petition is a werewolf and, therefore, banned from obtaining legal custody in any case, the Ministry feels--"  
  
"The Ministry can go fuck itself. Has anyone bothered to check in on him in the last two months?" Then he scoffed, remembering yet again where Sirius currently sat, how there'd been no trial, how no Veritaserum was administered, no Legilimens was summoned...how it was exacerbated by the fact that he couldn't shake the feeling something was off about the entire situation. "Of course not, because that would mean actually following your own fucking laws and we can't have _that_ nonsense! The very idea's blasphemy!"  
  
"I'll have to ask you to leave, now, Healer House." The only evidence House had of Ministry witch's true feelings on the matter was the faint pink tinge that had come to color her cheeks. He fed upon it, let it fuel his anger.  
  
"Fuck it, I'm done with this."  
  
He'd make one last stop and then he'd be leaving. There was no point anymore, nothing he could do to stop the slow siphoning of his soul from his body. But the least he could do was check to make sure that innocent little fireball he'd known and loved was going to be reasonably okay. He'd survive, of that House was sure. The question was only what condition he'd be in afterward.  
  
He took no solace in the fact that it'd be better than he.  
  
  
***  
  
_...Reminds me that there's more to life than living...And maybe giving up's not bad, but part of letting go of me..._  
  
**31 July, 2001**  
  
It's fitting, really, that the kid should show up on his twenty-first birthday. He walks with a limp that House can see improved, but won't any further. He twirls his own cane and laughs bitterly inside.  
  
"You're a bit different from my mother's pictures," Harry tells him, both leaning on their respective canes and House standing so that they can get a proper look at one another. "The lack of a smile's a dead giveaway, though."  
  
House snorts and leans back against his desk. "Sorry I haven't accosted you. Hope you're not too disappointed, kid."  
  
Harry smiles, small and slightly bitter, and House cringes inside. He looks like that, he knows. He wishes Harry doesn't. He wishes he believed that his fellows won't sooner or later.  
  
"I figure from what Remus told me about you, you couldn't be that bad. Hagrid said you and my mother had been really good friends. And that you were friends with Sirius' brother, as well."  
  
"He's not entirely right, but not wrong either." House doesn't know if that statement quite makes the same sense out loud that it did in his head, but can't find the effort to give a damn. House notices that Neville Longbottom is hovering around the entranceway to his office. Notices the rings on each of their fingers and grins a bit.  
  
"Congratulations," he murmurs, looking down to retrieve the bottle of whiskey he keeps in his desk drawer. Neville comes forward and House pours them each a shot to toast with. "May fundie Muggles everywhere cringe in your wake."  
  
Harry sighs and chuckles, a grin coming to his face as he sees the slight shock that now adorns his husband's. "Remus told me you were a shameless arsehole who delighted in unsettling others to the best of your ability. He seems to have been right."  
  
House smirks and then laughs as Harry leans to kiss Neville on the cheek. There's a gasp behind them and the three of them look to see Simmons having returned with the other minions. One of them is newer, a girl--House thinks her name is Winthrop. She's the one who gasped. Simmons, however, just looks amused. House finds himself strangely pleased at his fellow's nonchalance in the face of perceived weirdness. He'll have to see if he can strengthen that immunity and will probably have fun trying.  
  
"Kids," he says regally, something approximating a smile coming to his face. "This is Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom. They're married and I first met Harry during his babyhood appointment with a fireplace and bearskin rug."

He doesn't mention Luna. Winthrop (or whoever) looks like she's about to faint as it is.

"You did not," Harry rolls his eyes and thinks of the few pictures he does have of himself as a very small child. "My mother never would have let anyone humiliate me like that. Or given you the blackmail material."  
  
_True,_ House thinks and after his fellows leave, he gets Harry, Neville, Luna, and Remus' address to send them a letter or something later. They talk a long while and Harry is introduced to Wilson and Cuddy, the latter of whom is distinctly ill at ease with House for reasons Harry believes have to do with his half of their shared limp. After Wilson and Cuddy both leave, Harry explains that Dumbledore and Snape are both dead, as is Sirius. House isn't surprised about Snape or even Sirius, but the news that Dumbledore is also dead (at Snape's hands and on Draco's behalf, no less) throws him a bit. Harry shows him carefully preserved news clippings and photographs of the scene where Snape's bloodied body was found. The pictures are slightly damaged but House doesn't feel up to speculating why.  
  
"Before he left the last time," Harry tells him, his voice heavy but curious. "He said that you'd know where to find Draco and would I kindly do him the favor of inquiring after his health."  
  
House sighs and thinks of his surrogate little brother and that night in his parents' home. That had been the last time he'd seen Snape alive. He remembers their talk about Voldemort's mental capacities and repulsion of the Muggle world. Silently, he releases his wand into his right hand and waves it around the room. Harry and Neville both recognize that he's Imperturbing the office, but don't comment on it.  
  
"He's living with my mom and dad," House admits, hoping his father hasn't reduced the poor kid to a quivering mass of nerves by now. "He's fine, I think."  
  
Harry nods and rises awkwardly to his feet. Neville places a hand on his shoulder to brace him and when Harry's got his bearings, they both turn to shake his hand.  
  
"Hope to see you again soon," Harry says, a funny little smile coming to his face. "And under better circumstances."  
  
"Yeah," House agrees and they leave.  
  
_...We make believe every day...We make our lives seem like they're still worth living, but find out in the end...It's only us that we've been kidding...Just another stupid drama that no one notices but you...And you only take an interest when there's nothing else to do..._  
  
...TBC...


End file.
